Omnichannel expert advice for
managing your struggling business
during the coronavirus crisis Elisabeth Vanherpe | May 6, 2020

If your market demand is decreasing due to the current situation, we encourage you to see it as an opportunity to be creative and find new ways of connecting with your present and future customers. It is easier said than done, but because we work with multiple clients, many of whom have faced a significant drop in their normal order volume in recent weeks, we have been able to gather some actionable tips to help you with your digital marketing.

Increase brand awareness

If the market demand in your vertical has dropped off, now could be the time to increase your brand awareness. Those people who are still searching for your product related keywords could very well be the ones that will buy as soon as stores open again, or when the demand in your vertical picks up. Make sure you'll be able to target these prospects when the time is right. Create remarketing lists for the time frame in which demand was low and/or stores were closed. Since there are fewer advertisers active in the advertising space on display & social networks, the cost has reduced for many ads, so you can seize this opportunity to increase your brand awareness in your target group at a lower price.

Push your newsletter subscription

This is also a good time to collect email addresses so you can alert more people when you re-open. Whatever tactics you use, try to leverage all your current means to increase brand awareness and re-contact your brand when demand in your market revives.

Shift offline customers to online customers

Even if your bricks-and-mortar stores are closed, there could still be people who are searching for details of physical stores online. Make sure you capture these queries and redirect them to your online store.

Make the most of your marketing investments

With conversion rates and revenue streams decreasing across a multitude of industries and verticals, many brands are calculating the impact on their 2020 results and focusing on cost-efficiency and projected performance targets. Depending on your vertical and the estimated impact, this may be the only option.

However, single-mindedly focusing on the same hard targets you had before the pandemic may prove suffocating for your business. Given the current market situation, your business may benefit more than ever from “being there” for its customers, staying in contact with them and letting them know they can rely on your brand. As mentioned above, building brand awareness keeps you at the forefront of your customers’ minds during the pandemic and will help you get your business back on top when demand increases again. Analyse what works best for you and make data-driven decisions on your strategy: either focus on a hard ROI target or try to maximise the number of conversions or transactions still available in your market.

Depending on the outcome you may need to:

• Change the balance of your investments in the different phases of your marketing funnel (See-Think-Do-Care)
• Shift budgets between marketing funnels, channels and campaigns
• Adapt messaging in both upper & lower funnel marketing
• Decrease performance targets for certain areas of your marketing efforts
• Split up or set different campaign targets depending on your renewed or additional business objectives

Email Communication Tips for Suffering Businesses

If you have noticed that, even though your brand has been forced to scale back operations due to coronavirus, your database is still responding favourably to your communications, don’t be afraid to keep sending out emails. Just be aware of the following:

• Revise Content and Decrease Regularity of Comms
  Work out what you can usefully communicate to your database about your brand and its activities at this time and scale down your email output so that it is focused on this messaging.


• Omnichannel Messaging Alignment
  Ensure that all departments associated with your brand are communicating the same message on all platforms, in print, social and email. A coherent and sympathetic response, co-ordinated across all channels, will help to keep your customer base engaged and keep you at the forefront or their minds for when business as usual resumes.


• Remain Focused on KPIs and Keep Analysing Stats
  There has never been a crisis of this nature in the digital age, so you will have no precedent from which to learn. All you can do is keep an eye on your KPIs and use all the analytical tools at your disposal to learn from trends and patterns in database activity as you go. Don’t be afraid to revisit communications scheduled at the beginning of the crisis if subsequent stats tell you that a different approach may be more successful in the ultimate goal of keeping your database active and engaged.