2020 didn’t only lead business operations to adapt and evolve, it also pushed business owners and their marketers to take a look, review, and pivot their digital marketing strategies to align with the pandemic accordingly.

To help improve your marketing strategy for 2020, here are some hacks and tips you can apply to your marketing plan.

1. Tell your story

It’s important that you know how to maximize your current resources. The question is: What do you have now that will not cost you much?

Your story.

Airbnb became a major disruption in the hotel and travel industry because of its value proposition – offering cheaper accommodation than a regular hotel accommodation. However, they didn’t position their brand this way. They tell their story as a brand that offers a place of belongingness and experience like a local.

Also read: 5 keys to Airbnb's marketing success that you can learn from 

Learn to tell your story. Instead of pushing to sell your products, sell your ‘why’.  The art of storytelling can differentiate your brand to others. Why? It’s because your story is unique and people generally love to hear stories that they can relate with.

2. Review data across channels

The best way to come up with digital content and campaigns is to review data across channels and determine your audience or customer behaviour.

Some things you should take note of:

• What is the best time for posting content?
• What type of content has the most engagement, conversion and reach?
• What is your organic reach? How many organic mentions did you get across all channels?

You can adapt your content according to these metrics. This also helps you to learn from your previous strategies and improve if there are things that have gone wrong.

3. Align your marketing and branding

Your marketing and branding should complement each other. Your brand is not just your product or your service, but it’s the message you share with your customers across all platforms.

Let’s take Nike’s famous tagline, ‘Just do it’, as an example. Their core message is not heavily pushing someone to buy their products, but it comes with an impactful message and encouragement making their customers believe that they can and be successful too when they wear Nike products.

In the Philippines, The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) also launched digital campaigns that harnessed their mission to help and empower micro, small, and medium enterprises in the country. They called it ‘Buyanihan’ (spirit of communal unity) that encourages everyone to support local especially in this time of pandemic.

These are good examples of turning your brand message into a marketing strategy.

Some business owners fall into the trap of selling their products on online platforms without having a coherent brand message. Harnessing your brand’s message to your marketing strategy will not only help you in improving conversion or sales, but it will also help you build loyal followers and customers.

4. Create and produce interactive content

After harnessing your brand’s message, it’s time to get your visitors or customers engaged with your brand. As you learn more about them through the data you gathered across your online platforms, you can now create content that will provide value to them.

Some examples of interactive content are:

• Creating games, quizzes or polls to your online store or website
• Producing interactive videos or vlog
• Organizing giveaways or contests
• Integrating chatbots to your website or online store

If you are on a shoestring budget, you can conduct a fun contest on your social media platform that allows your customers to share or like your post – an organic reach at its best!

There are a lot of ways that you can do it. The good thing with this is that you can play around with your creativity while leveraging the brand’s message and the data that you have. It can be part of your team’s agenda where you share different ideas on how you can incorporate fun and interactive content into your marketing strategy.

Also read: Power of content: How to generate traffic to your eStore using content

These are some of the practical hacks that you can apply to your marketing strategy in 2021. Marketing trends are ever-changing, and one cannot predict what the new year will bring. But one thing is for sure, if you know your brand’s core message and your metrics, you can adapt and pivot more effectively.

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