Every brand that we know of is trying to break the clutter and come up with a content marketing strategy in the Covid as well as post-Covid world.
Is it easy??
Of course not! Remember, we were already staring at too-much content world and suddenly the current situation was hurled at us. Most of us marketers had created plans for the next 6 months, if not a year and much of that has hit a pause.
The challenge now is, all of us have gone back to the drawing board and are rewriting our content strategy to align with the “new normal” (we have heard that enough, haven’t we).
Do we know what will work? Yes, Maybe, No…Very few will say ‘yes’ though.
Based on what I have learnt so far, here are the top 4 ways you can work out your content marketing strategies.
4 Content Marketing Tactics for Covid
Communicate Clearly
It is more important than ever to choose your words carefully.
Brands have to clearly share their purpose and steps they are taking to tackle the current situation.
Readers are not keen to hear about big promises, they are looking for action and how you are co-creating for a larger good.
The recent ad by Nike was a good example of how clear communication. The message stands out with a clear call to action – Play For The World.
If you notice, the entire ad has no sales message but it’s about the larger cause about how they sympathise with people across the globe.
Build Empathy
Empathy is the key to success of any brand, irrespective of your business being B2C or B2B. The end-user is still a human!!
How are you building empathy with your users?? And not just them, what about your own employees too?
The best example I came across in recent time was of Starbucks. The CEO, Kevin Johnson last month wrote to their 200,000+ employees across the globe.
He start right sharing some of the impacts of current situations with the statement – “the loss of life, feelings of isolation and loneliness, concerns about health and fears of economic uncertainty”
What stood out on ’empathy’ factor was –
Not all decisions are financial, and in a crisis like this, they must be secondary to the health and well-being of our partners and customers.
~Kevin Johnson
In just couple of lines, he stated that employee and customer well-being was his priority.
Innovate
As marketers, we love EVENTS!!
The grandeur, the synchronization of various teams and all things around, it is every marketers dream to be part of.
Physical events were an integral part of awareness and lead-generation campaigns, especially for B2B brands.
But with Covid situation, the physical events have taken a long pause and most of us are scratching our heads on what would be the best way to keep our audience, partners, prospects and customers engaged.
And so the need to innovate!
Folks are already inundated with virtual events and so innovation on your approach and content strategy will be the key.
Virtual meetings is just not about having speakers join on Zoom, Webex, Teams or similar platform. Marketers have to start leveraging technology and explore platforms to drive more interactions.
Content has to be planned in a way that it shouldn’t become a monologue but have polls, Q&A and other gamification strategies.
Measure KPIs
Make KPIs your friend!!
We are in a period that marketing dollars are hard to come by, so you need to make every spend count.
Equally important is to ask, will measuring the same KPIs that you previously had work?
I believe that at this point, instead of looking at quantitative KPIs the focus should be on qualitative KPIs.
So it’s is important to measure –
- Reach
- Engagement
- Customer/Employee satisfaction
Some of the best examples of these are your customer or employee testimonials. Just getting a little selfish there, here’s a great testimonial we received at my organization Tech Mahindra
Your thoughts?
What according to you are the best content strategies during the current times. What works and what should brands NOT DO.
