COVID-19 has had tremendous, dramatic impacts on virtually every industry across the planet, and marketing has been no exception. As all of us Communications Specialists, Content Managers, and Marketers can testify, the old way of doing things just isn’t cutting it in the post-COVID world. Even with the vaccine underway, and the world slowly heading towards the fabled “new normal”, the pandemic has changed consumer behaviour permanently. Customers are more cautious and less trusting, and if you want your marketing campaign to succeed, you’ll have to heed these five learnings - that we all had to learn the hard way during lockdowns, panic buying, and mass paranoia.
#1: Your digital storefront has to be perfect
Working with a large retail client, they told me that customers used to tolerate their flawed online shopping experience because they were able to consistently beat competitors on price. Post-COVID, when the switch from retail to online hit every industry in full force, that was no longer the case, and they suddenly found themselves needing to hastily overhaul their entire digital storefront.
If you’re selling any kind of product, especially if it’s a product that competitors also sell, your online experience not only has to be flawless, but also has to go above and beyond. It’s not enough to simply have everything work, but customers should be able to easily manipulate their shopping cart, search for specific items, navigate sales and promotions, and easily understand shipping (preferably free, and baked into the cost somewhere else) and other potential fees. Unlike shopping at a retail store, where there is quite a large barrier to physically emptying your shopping cart and trying to find the product elsewhere, when your customers are online, your competitor is literally a click away.
Don’t bother running any kind of digital marketing promotion until you get this step done. If you send customers to a poor experience, all you’re going to do is turn them away at best, and at worst, send them right to your competitor! It’s no longer acceptable to outsource a less-than-reputable offshore IT team to slap together a barely-functional online storefront. Take the time, and the resources, to build something properly.
Check in next week for #2: Appeal to the Working from Home revolution
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