4 Ways to Navigate Marketing in the New Age

“Market like the year you are in.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

The rollercoaster ride of 2020 has changed all things marketing, yet, in some ways, this turn of events has actually accelerated trends.

Marketing during a time like this requires a delicate balance. What you need to do is understand your prospects, their needs, and offer them value. Lend a helping hand to your customers to guide them through this situation instead of maneuvering ‘hacks’ or hitting pause on all your efforts.

Let’s not call it a ‘new normal’ and call it the ‘new marketing age’ instead.

Let’s understand how you can adapt to this new marketing landscape, its emerging challenges, and the shifting expectations of customers.

New Rules for the New Game

The change of events has filled the marketing landscape with new opportunities. All you have to do is read the room and read it right to get ahead of the pack.

Here’s an example of what Nike did with the power of athlete-influencers to lead the charge and encourage people to play inside.

Another simple yet effective message was portrayed by McDonald’s, when it separated its iconic Golden Arches to remind people of the importance of social distancing.

Marketers need to focus their efforts on how they are uniquely positioned to help customers. Let’s understand in detail what marketers should do.

4 Ways for Marketers to Ride the Waves of New Marketing

The new marketing calls for a solid approach that must be monitored and constantly adjusted to respond to a changing landscape. Here’s how:

1. Deliver Strong and Clear Communication: Your communication has to be strong and vivid both internally and externally. Collaborate internally so that you have a multi-lens view and everyone involved knows the company’s stance on the latest trends. Invest time to speak with your audience as well as employees. You need to combat the crisis fatigue and focus your message on the value that your product or service can bring to help your target audience regain lost ground, go forward, and grow.

2. Focus on Marketing Tactics: Your marketing ‘strategy’ answers the long-term questions while your marketing ‘tactics’ are ‘the detail of strategy’. They are the strategic actions that guide your efforts to achieve specific marketing goals. Base your marketing tactics on current market conditions and not long-term strategies so that any new changes can be aligned. When you focus on a short horizon, your marketing efforts are more agile and adaptable.

3. Embrace Flexibility in Your Marketing Plan: A flexible marketing strategy gives you the opportunity to respond and adapt to changing trends in the market. With an agile approach, you can pursue new opportunities and use alternate routes to reach your set goals. You can collaborate with respective stakeholders to map out scenarios that you think could happen based on industry and global trends. For such scenarios, create fallback plans that you could use just in case things don’t go as expected.

4. Experiment and Learn: The current scenario is all about experimenting and learning the new order of the world. You can get creative with a new campaign. For this, you should analyze what your audience wants, ideate your campaign accordingly, execute it, measure results, identify the gaps, and work on how you can improve upon it. Track your campaigns every step of the way to uncover what is working and what isn’t so that you can make smarter data-driven decisions. The best way to learn new things is by experimenting.

As you ride through this new wave of marketing, be proactive with your marketing wits and use these actionable ways to achieve and exceed your goals.

Looking for smart ways to navigate your marketing in the new age? Talk to us!