Content Marketing Strategy during a Pandemic

We are already 20 days into the new year, and you are still struggling with your 2021 Content Marketing strategy. Worry not; as we go through some of the lessons learned last year and help you build a primed plan for the short-term.

Last year was unexpected, and it sure taught us a lot about ourselves. 2 things that 2020 has taught us all across are

Work from home works

2020 opened our eyes to work from home and how!

With major corporations to small businesses worldwide, all the generations right from Boomers to Gen X, Millennials got in the groove of remote-work like never before. Unified Communication services such as Zoom, Microsoft teams, Slack all enjoyed a never before upthrust in their adoption by individuals and enterprises alike.

Prepare for the Short-Term

The pandemic brought a stop to all the plans for the new decade. And as the plans, budgets, spends crumbled, so did our long-term goals. Businesses took some time to regroup, rebuild and thus came in – Short-Term Plans!

One would argue that short term plans are always part of the mix. However, one significant difference is that while we are planning for the short-term, we see a stacked approach wherein newer customer journeys came to focus.

This approach made one realize the importance of customer personas. One paid attention to newer customer behaviors such as eCommerce, Contactless Shopping, a mix of online and offline – a hybrid model.

Let’s take a look at a few key content marketing strategies for the short term.

Marketing for the now

Take an inventory of how your business has changed over the last few months and who exactly are the customers, and how do you serve them?

Identify how the customer behavior is changing and what are their expectations? What is expected behavior in a few weeks, months, or till the next quarter?

It’s the best time to sync up with your sales and customer success teams to understand critical trends affecting buyer behavior. What are the objections that your sales team is facing?

Thus, leading to our next point –

Prepare your Content Marketing Strategy around customer objections.

It would really help identify and work on the objections and find a way to seep them into the marketing.

Watch as your brand leads the customer from their objection to their destination as your content marketing efforts act as a compass. Create content to ease them and make them understand how your product or service might be the answer. This kind of marketing evokes a deep sense of relatability and makes the customer feel safe amidst all the chaos. The last thing you want as a customer is to feel like you are being sold to.

Maybe your brand is not still ful-y functional and does not deliver value in the form of a product or service due to operational issues. This is where Content Marketing can help position your brand as a

• Thought Leader or
• A friend that drives essential messages or announcements for your community
• Provide the much needed comic relief

Find newer audiences

The pandemic has enabled us worldwide with a level playing field wherein we all have shared a shared human experience. We have transitioned towards digital adoption at scale. This means especially in a country like India, many of the audiences have changed their perspectives overnight about many of their purchase behaviors.

Is your business one such entity that can actually now cater to a broader audience owing to digitization?

Surveys, Feedback campaigns, Freemium models are a sure bait to test out these newer audiences.

Newer Content Formats & Repurposing the Old

Much like everybody, your business is operating remotely with a few hiccups like the inconsistent internet, the usual distractions at home, and a lopsided work-life balance. Much of this has resulted in people feeling overwhelmed with work. Repurposing content, Curation will help to relieve your team and keep the content flowing to your social and digital channels.

The pandemic has made live streams, webinars a house-hold feature. These are not newer formats per-se but using video as content has never been easier. Webinars and Livestreams can become pillar content wherein you can extract micro pieces of content for social sharing. A single hour of live streaming can help you quickly create 10+ micro pieces of content.

Content marketing strategy is not limited to just Sales and Marketing. It is also about your team members’ well-being – making them happy will undoubtedly reap you multiple benefits in the long run.

KPI’s that matter

Marketing, in general, is a KPI oriented play. Minus KPI’s all your efforts are nothing else but a spray and pray technique. So given the short term – what are the KPI’s that really matter.

Going by the idea that you can produce more content and connect with more users, you need to assess their actions. Following are some relevant KPI’s that can help you make informed decisions.

Webinar 

• Number of Visitors on Landing page vs. Number of Registrations
• Number of Registrations vs. Number of Attendees
• Duration of Attendees in the webinar
• At what point did people leave?

Social Posts

• Reach vs. Engagement
• Number of Saved posts
• Number of DMs in a day – outreach is vital to get in touch with your right community.

Website

• Number of Visitors per week
• Number of Visitors per month
• Identify the source of visitors.

Conclusion

Short term strategies are here to stay for the long term. Small changes lead to remarkable results – this is the entire premise of the best seller – Atomic Habits by James Clear.

“The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”

Atomic Habits – James Clear

The same stands true for marketing as well. As we continue our journey ahead, we need to look beyond the pandemic, and if one thing that we as a race learned in 2020 is that – the smallest of things can make a big difference.

If you are interested in learning more about content marketing strategy or wish to explore more hacks that can improve your marketing as a company, individual, or agency – check out: Our Webinar