How businesses will exploit digital marketing after COVID?
Marketing and advertisement techniques are changing rapidly. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen them travelling from print media to radio and television and finally to the digital world.
The new normal!
2020 has been a year of upside-downs!
Since this pandemic is spreading like fire, it isn’t easy to ascertain when the situation will be under control, but surely, we are getting accustomed to the new normal of social distancing and staying home!
This pandemic pushed the global economy into recession, and it is expected to shrink by over 3% in 2020!
We are all speculating what will happen to the business world as customer behaviour has shifted, and it has left the marketers stunned! The lock-down and social distancing have developed a habit among people to rely more on technology for education, work, and trading. The business has become more reliant on the digital medium to operate.
The Internet is not quarantined for the quarantined!
We should drop ideas of simple and offline marketing, keeping in mind the restrictions on the face to face business practices. Customers are hesitant to walk through a door and shake your hands, and no one has any idea of how long this will persist. People spend more time online using social media to chat with each other and online purchasing to comfort themselves.
From schools to colleges to meetings and engineering houses, every institution is conducting its operation online.
Brands have acknowledged the business situation, and digital marketing is their primary focus. Adapting to the digital world will help companies explore and form new channels over the web where new relationships can be fostered. During this time, digital will not die and would be the most convenient mode to reach out to the customer and to rejuvenate our falling economy.
Businesses and Industries will take years to come out of COVID recession, but Digital Marketing won’t be one among them!
What’s trending?
The positive side of COVID-19 is the behaviour change, which has carved an enormous opportunity for digital marketers. Age group 35 to 44 have increased their internet consumption by 11%, while millennials observed an increase of 5–7 %. Similarly, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram have seen a rise in their number of sessions per week per user by 18%, 17%, and 20%, respectively (as per data).
Gaming Industry and Social media advertisement witnessed 25% and 29% increase in their business, respectively.
Travel & Tourism business declined by 29%, and online News organizations have seen 11x more traffic than before!
Investors and marketers are supposed to be hitting the market with new strategies and tactics.
Digital marketing is highly futuristic!
The trends suggest that the online population is increasing, and everyone’s going digital with the inception of websites and social media.
Some stats to consider-
· Approx. 700 million Indians are expected to go online and create a vast internet base by 2023 (as per the reports)
· India’s e-commerce industry is estimated to cross more than 150 billion USD by 2022 (as per reports).
· India’s advertising industry is expected to cross over 19000 crore INR (Dentsu Aegis Network).
· Indian smartphone user base is expected to grow by over 442 million by 2022 (TRAI reports).
· Approx. Sixty-five million digital marketing jobs are expected to pave their way.
· Telecommunication stalwarts like Reliance Jio has made both the Internet and smartphones even more accessible and cheap.
Emerging trends in Digital Marketing
· As advertisers have a lot of data from customers, personalized ads are picking up pace.
· Virtual reality technology will be used to communicate with customers.
· Digital Interactive billboards are replacing Print media billboards.
· Voice-controlled technologies like Alexa and Google will be widespread.
· Pay per clicks would be more relevant.
· New technologies like artificial intelligence, chatbots will be widespread.
· High Return on Investment (ROI) generating tools & digital channels, like SEO, programmatic advertising, and conversational marketing, will witness an incredible increase in investments during and post-COVID-19.
Conclusion:
We’ve seen the growth of e-commerce and online business over the years, but now the growth will accelerate to a whole new level.
India had recorded a staggering 120 million regular online shoppers in 2018, with a CAGR of 28%, the online shoppers are expected to reach over 200 million by 2025.
With a 100% increase in online sales in India, businesses and entrepreneurs realize that the shift might be more formidable and long term than they ever thought.
Also, the Government is highly ambitious about its Digital India project. Digital India is an initiative by the Government of India (GoI) to ensure that Government’s services are available to citizens electronically through improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or making the country digitally empowered in technology.
There is a window of opportunities for Digital Marketers in the coming years if done right, and the companies are on their way to celebrating long-term value and success.
Digitalization is likely to be the winner in this game!
