"We live in unprecedented times." This is probably a sentence you have heard many times since the outbreak of the pandemic. Thinking about the "new normal" is changing the way we act and the things we believe in, including what we will do in the future to support local economies and the brands we care about. What are the implications for your business with these changes on the horizon?
Marketing and sales teams around the world agree that their target customer groups - the people they defined last year - may no longer be fully valid.
In the light of economic losses, people are more interested in meeting basic needs than in buying luxury items that are useless for survival. In addition, people are becoming more aware of the patterns of general marketing tactics and are condemning them. Brands have to reconsider who their potential customers might be according to the current situation and adapt strategies that will resonate with them.
It is not easy to propose a new definition of target groups for the marketing mix. However, brands can start by asking four questions, keeping in mind the psychological profile of your customers.
- What are our goals?
- Have these goals changed?
- Does it have to change?
- Have our values and priorities changed?
We see things in the crisis that we would not normally see. Today with the deepening economic recession posing an existential threat to some businesses, companies must question - and perhaps redefine - their priorities and ask themselves:
- What are the new needs of our audiences?
- How do our offers come together?
In changing times, brands need to understand who their ideal customer is and, more importantly, who their real customer is.
This customer is probably the same demographically as before, but his behavior, beliefs, and needs have probably changed.
Media consumption preferences are also evolving. It is necessary to ask further:
- How do our customers behave in the digital environment right now?
- Are our customers now buying more online?
- Has their business (if you operate in the B2B segment) been forced to transform digitally and they are still struggling with the consequences of this change?
- How can we help?
Businesses shouldn't focus on how to advertise, but on how to help people address their current (basic) needs, which they're thinking about more now. Not only will your customers appreciate honesty and humanity, but some may even demand it, which also leads us back to the question of your company's values.
Adapt your digital strategy to the new norm
Clearly, there has been a shift in the demographics of consumers who shop online. The need for digital services, from online shopping to education, has increased in the last few months. Digital services are also more sought after by the older generation.
With the demographic shift of your audience, you need to focus on your site and user experience in detail. You don't want your new audience members to visit the page and leave immediately without conversion, because your site isn't user-friendly. Therefore, review your UX / UI and web or application content strategy with your new audience. This can mean, for example, adapting your UX / UI solutions to meet the expectations of older people.
What's more, the look of your site's home page is no longer the most important thing to consider. Instead, you need to customize the site (and app, if you have one) to suit your visitors' needs.
For example, let's say you're a grocery store and that you supply to customers. Your website or application should not look the same to new visitors as it does to regular customers.
The Call to Action (CTA) and the easy-to-find "e-shop" button should also welcome visitors who are visiting the site for the first time. You can greet your existing visitors instead with a greeting: "Welcome back" or a list of what they ordered last instead of the button.
Due to the higher number of people who use online services, it is also advisable to consider the use of chatbots. Artificial intelligence assistants can help answer your customers' most frequently asked questions and save you time. To shorten the customer's conversion path, it might be useful to implement live product recommendations using AI. Other methods to consider could be the most watched, best-selling, trending, or recently viewed.
The outbreak of COVID-19 taught us to rethink our choices and purchasing patterns. Due to health problems and economic crises around the world, consumers are less willing to buy things that do not meet their basic needs or support local communities. As we slowly move to a new norm, honesty, humanity, comfort and practicality play an important role in approaching customers. The psychological profile of consumers has changed significantly, and brands around the world need to pay more attention to the current, and changing, needs of their customers.
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