It’s exceptionally frightening to see the abundance of small and big businesses coming under business rescue or closing altogether as well as hundreds of thousands of people who become unemployed as a result. Unfortunately, not a lot of them are succeeding in finding jobs.
“The companies who survive,” says Lisa Schneider: managing director at the Digital School of Marketing, “are those who have sufficient amounts of cash flow to sustain their business during times when no money is coming in. Those businesses who also survive are those who are able to operate digitally.”
With the social distancing requirement, which will probably be here for the next two years (this is the predicted length of time that Covid-19 will still be at pandemic levels) prompting people to stay away from events that require people to gather in one place at the same time – such as in a shopping centre – there’s no telling when ‘businessas-usual’ will resume for bricks- and- mortar retail outlets. This means that, in order to survive, they are going to need to rethink their strategies.
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Customer touchpoints have migrated
It used to be very simple, and required not a lot of effort to keep in touch with your customers. If all else failed, you could just put a shop assistant into your store who would guide the customer towards a purchase.
“However now,” continues Schneider, “retail brands have to think outside the box because people are not coming through the doors.” Because people are buying more and more online, this means that brands who have traditionally only retailed in-store, with a bit online, now have to focus the majority of their efforts on their digital marketing and attracting online sales.
It’s not impossible to make this jump, but it does take a bit of time, effort and creative thinking. “Brands need to pay particular attention to tried-and-trusted marketing principles as these will ensure that any planned digital marketing campaign will achieve the targets that it intends to,” concludes Schneider. Culled from Bizcommunity.
