As the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic, your business and its content marketing action plan must also be suffering from its detrimental impact.
There are certain industries (e.g., restaurants, hospitality, real estate, transportation, travel) that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic.
From the perspective of content marketing, there aren’t really that many people showing interest in these areas.
This means the content that is being put out isn’t attracting qualified leads.
Coronavirus has created tremendous disruption in the digital marketing ecosystem and it is not going away any time soon.
So, do you cut marketing budgets, keep going the way you are, or actually increase the marketing spend?
There are no easy answers here.
But the simple, and for the most part, effective answer is that you should modify your content marketing action plan by seeing it through the COVID-19 prism.
It’s important to remember that your target audience is anxious, scared, economically unstable, and facing a host of challenges and are looking for answers.
The last thing they want is a business trying to convince them to buy its products or services.
So, don’t.
Your content marketing strategy should be mindful of the needs of its audience.
So here are five things you can do.
1. Analysis & Evaluation of Your Existing Strategy
What’s working and what’s not?
This is the question you must first answer.
For instance, if you are investing heavily in Facebook ads, it is time to evaluate this strategy.
Are those ads getting the results you want or are they just eating into your content marketing spend, something that you can’t afford?
If your business belongs to categories like cleaning, TV, food delivery, etc., you can actually choose to increase your social media budget.
There are brands that have actually gone ahead and increased their social media spend during this time because it makes sense for them to do so.
Something else you need to think about is crafting a strategy in such a way that it prepares you for a future correction in your business domain.
If you go easy on your content marketing activities, you won’t be in a situation to take advantage of a scenario, wherein interest in your business domain picks up.
As a business, you have to be an optimist.
Your strategy must reflect optimism and not pessimism.
2. Add Fuel to Your Blogging Efforts
Blogs are among the top forms of media that are integral to content strategies today.
If you are not using a blog, you are doing your brand a huge disservice.
Blogging will give you an opportunity to offer highly researched information to your target audience and you can write on any topic under the sun, the only caveat – it must be relevant to your business.
In the times of coronavirus, you can use your blog to talk to your audience and relieve their anxiety.
You can use your blog to breathe much-needed positivity into their lives in these trying times.
The idea here is to keep your blog active and relevant.
While you might not be discussing your products/services or domain expertise via your business blog, you can still come across as a brand that cares about its potential customers.
And this is what counts during this time.
What’s more, if it’s your own blog, you don’t incur any extra expense in publishing this content.
It’s a win-win.
3. Leverage the Power of Emails
There are around 5.59 billion active email accounts across the world.
So no, emails haven’t gone out of fashion.
The average email open rate is 17.8%, which is quite healthy.
The median email marketing ROI can be pegged at an amazing 122%.
These figures mean only one thing – you must use email marketing, especially now.
Your emails should be an ideal mix of “sales and marketing” mails and “how are you doing” mails.
The latter is important, because your brand shouldn’t come out as insensitive.
And, it is imperative that you show genuine concern for your target audience and this should be evident from your email copy.
Don’t pitch your products/services in such emails. These emails are only about showing your concern, and hoping that these will have an impact on brand recall.
Usually, they do.
4. Focus on Video Content
If you still aren’t making videos to sell your products and/or services, you are missing out.
But this pandemic gives you an opportunity to create videos that show you care for your existing and potential customers.
Here’s an example of what you can do – if you are a digital marketing services company, create a video that announces discounted rates all through this period, which shows that you understand the financial problems faced by your customers.
You can even create videos offering free strategic tips that can help clients in these tough times.
Or you can just create a “How are you” video. The options are limitless and now is the time to use videos optimally.
YouTube was the second most used social media platform in the world in April 2020, with 2 billion users.
As a business, you cannot afford to ignore the reach of a platform like YouTube and the engagement power of a video.
5. Content Asset Creation
Content is king. This phrase has stood the test of time and will continue to do so.
One of the critical actions you can take is to use some of the free time you have at your disposal to create value-driven content assets.
These can be guides, white papers, case studies, ebooks, and the like.
Creating such assets takes time. You might not have added such assets to your content marketing efforts because your time was in short supply.
But, now is the time to create assets such as actionable guides that will bring in visitors to your site.
Your target audience also has free time on their hands, in the current situation.
Yes, life is limping back to normal, but people are still looking for meaningful material to read (to help pass time constructively), preferably one that helps them make more informed decisions.
Capitalize and deliver on their requirements and expectations.
You can gate this content, which helps you built an opt-in email list that can enable you to run a targeted email marketing campaign.
Such content, will also help you build authority in your niche, at a time when it is difficult to do so.
This will help you steal a march over your competitors.
Conclusion
In the times of coronavirus, your content marketing action plan must be empathetic to the needs of your target audience.
The world is suffering and you therefore mustn’t have glorious expectations from your content marketing strategy.
Your strategy should be measured. Strive to reach your audience in such a way that they won’t criticize it. This will ensure that it works.
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Image Credits
Featured Image: Created by author, May 2020
