The coronavirus crisis has paused every economy in the world, and has naturally reduced companies’ financial forecasts for 2020. However, every leader must be ready to bounce back and return stronger and smarter; this requires a rethinking of their marketing strategy, as mentioned in our previous post explaining the concept of “Revenge Spending”.
Digital Marketing post COVID-19 will demand that brands and companies redesign their performance game plan and develop continuous experimentation within the key practices of paid advertising. Digital marketing teams must change their media plans and campaign calendar as soon as possible in order to prepare for the Re-activate and Re-Engage (re-launch) phases. The priority of all future campaigns must be boosting life time value and customer experience, as well as delivering a purpose driven and meaningful brand.
Marketers will have to become avid growth hackers and understand how to build customer-centric performance strategies with a full end-to-end consumer journey approach. Performance Marketing Excellence will only be possible with the right set of Martech tools.
Too much digital marketing is deployed without the right scientific approach and measurement capacities in terms of basic analytics, lead nurturing, conversion and attribution. As the third wave of the Good Rebels COVID-19 barometer shows, companies are starting to think about how to accelerate their digital transformation roadmap and increase their adoption of Martech solutions. This will scale and provide continuous improvement to every aspect of their digital marketing roadmaps and improve their performance marketing practices. It’s a study with a specific growth forecast for digital marketing. However, CMOs should be bold and transfer 25% of their marketing budgets towards digital after the COVID-19 crisis is over. Of course, there will be more competition and it will be necessary to have a more robust and creative approach towards performance with real time optimisation capacities and dynamic scorecards.
According to the Gartner’s latest CMO Survey, Martech now accounts for over 30% of the total marketing expense budget. Let’s define what a Martech stack is: it’s a set of digital performance platforms that enables your company to efficiently and effectively run their digital marketing efforts. It must be well balanced and allow your company to manage all of the phases of the customer journey, maximize the productivity and improve ROAS results. It is also important to select tools that have advanced data features, predictive capacities and automatisation options.
Your marketing team should select the right set of tools and make sure these technologies integrate well with each other. The marketing stack will evolve as your digital marketing roadmap evolves and requires new services. Companies will have to implement over 10 marketing and advertising technologies if they wish to maximize the ROI of their digital marketing and generate competitive positions within digital.
The funnel is key
Remember the process to conquer your next new customer and loyalty customer is built on the funnel dynamic, and should have a more purpose-driven and human-centric approach post COVID-19 (as mentioned in the “Should brands flatten their curve on social media?” post).
It is critical to adopt the right tools that will cover the key stages of the funnel with customer experience KPIs.
- Awareness: Building brand power, meaningfulness and value for money is must with your performance strategies.
- Consideration: Innovative performance tactics generating interest will be needed. It is especially important to connect with the consumer using new hooks and early in the consumer journey if you wish to maximize your ROAS.
- Conversion: Your performance marketing must be conversion focused – however, innovative and personalized campaigns will be necessary that are relevant and based on CRO best practices.
Make sure your campaigns help visitors solve their problems and perceive the value proposition focusing on the benefits of your company. Make it 80% educational and 20% useful. Focus on personalised positive experiences.
Follow a methodology
Performance Strategies will require advanced methodologies in order to achieve the best results with continuous experimentation and agile decision processes. Performance must be flexible and have real time components.
In addition, the new and improved performance must be accompanied by the following digital capacities:
Social Listening & Analytics Social media listening is about finding and tracking online conversations of users around the world and understanding your value proposition. Social listening provides you great insights in terms of share of voice, influence, impact and other metrics that are key.
- Content Management Systems (CMS) with Marketing Automation features: A content management system enables you to create and modify digital content. Web-based systems tie in with your website. It enables your company to effectively manage your digital assets and editorial calendar.
- Search Engine Optimization & Web Analytics: SEO and Web Analytics are the first tools once your digital assets are launched. Inbound marketers depend on solid SEO strategies that help them attract the right audience via search engines and use web analytics to understand and optimise advertising ROI.
- Inbound and Email Platforms: Inbound and Email marketing must be relevant in order to achieve effective channels. The martech tools of emailing and marketing automation will allow you to personalise responses and automate repetitive communications.
- Full integration of your Marketing Cloud and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform: It will be necessary especially in the closing phase of the Purchase touchpoints. The selected CRM tool will work great for Life time value purposes in the long run. The software as a service CRM platform must have advanced data and customer interaction insights so your travel company manages to drive sales growth and improve customer experience.
Choose the best tools
Ensure you also select and deploy effective Social Media Management tools. Social Media Management Tools help companies connect with their audience on a one-to-one basis and maximise engagement. These include:
- Advertising tools to maximise your mobile, PPC, display and social marketing results.
- Customer Service tools enabling your company to provide great seamless and smart answers to all of their needs with historical data.
- Revenue and Channel Management Technologies facilitating your company’s best business results in terms of Average Order Online and Cost of Acquisition.
- Collaborative tools maximising workforce productivity, empowerment and engagement.
The real challenge for your company is to adopt the most effective martech and train your teams in the upcoming weeks maximising customer satisfaction, intelligence and digital marketing ROI. It is important to justify the martech investments. Selecting the right tool for your company depends on the level of digital strategy execution and the size of your team.
There are some important key questions for your digital marketing team when selecting the best tools for your company:
- Which Martech solutions are most effective for my needs? Does the tool have experimentation features?
- Are the implementation and training easy? What are the customer service levels of the vendor?
- How simple and easy is the platform? Does it connect well with other tools?
- What are the costs and value-for-money of the tools?
Think smart, and maximise your ROI
The ultimate goal of performance is to maximize the ROI of digital, connecting the right audiences with a relevant message and call to actions. Don’t forget the performance strategy must be designed with a brand, consumer experience and business in mind. Focusing exclusively on short term conversion results is not the best option to improve your brand’s Life Time Value and maximise your financial results. Always work with creative campaign concepts that challenge the consumer, as well as building saliency and meaningfulness. It is critical to connect with the consumer in the early stages of the journey, driving conversions and improving CPXs.
Start today! It’s time to readjust your marketing budget based on the new marketing reality and consumer expectations.
