Marketing in the New Normal
In April 2020, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said that we've experienced 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months. He's right. Now that it's June, we're probably somewhere around 3 years of digital transformation in 5 months.
COVID-19 has forced companies of all sizes to rethink how they do business. Supply chains have been disrupted. Massive swaths of the workforce have gone 100% virtual. Brick and more store fronts are closing, driving a further acceleration toward ecommerce.
The Marketing function is no exception. Live events have been cancelled. Conferences and tradeshows are unlikely to ever return in the same form; and if they do, CMOs will be reluctant to reengage at the same spend levels.
With all this disruption and change comes opportunity for innovation in the event space. Savvy marketers have made the pivot to virtual events. They are embracing new platforms like On24, which facilitate "immersive" virtual experiences. And what they are finding is startling. Okta, for example, recently held their annual conference virtually, and were able to reach 10x the attendees at a fraction of the cost.
On the web front, digital teams are doubling down as your corporate website becomes more important than ever. Sales teams aren't traveling to do their pitches in person. Your customers are traveling to meet you. So they are perusing your site and your competitors site more than ever.
This is a great opportunity to tune your messaging to develop an empathetic tone and to put your value proposition front and center.
This is also an opportunity to expand your content marketing efforts. Forward-thinking marketing teams are developing unique content and insights that help their customers as they wrestle with the changes within their own business.
What insights can your team provide to your customers and prospects to help them navigate the Supply chain disruptions brought on by COVID? The rush to remote work? The accelerated shift to eCommerce? etc.
Never has it been more important to walk in your customers' shoes and develop messaging, content, and programs that meet their needs.
It's fair to say that across all facets of Marketing - digital, events, and sales enablement - the changes brought on by COVID 19 are many.
But the opportunities for innovation have never been higher.