After COVID-19: 6 Marketing Tactics to Get the Most Out of Your Budget

The COVID-19 fallout has devastated our economy, and many business leaders are scrambling to figure out the new normal – and how to approach their marketing to best ensure longevity in an uncertain world. 

“Do I move forward with previously planned marketing initiatives?”

“Do I read the tea leaves and try to create new campaigns that better fit our changed world?”

“Even after this initial wave of COVID-19, there could be others. How will this affect my marketing moving forward?”

Marketing Tactic #1: Prioritize

Many industries have been decimated by the sudden drop in demand as the country effectively shut down. As you look to rebuild lost revenue:

• Focus first on retaining your existing customers: Develop a strategic communication campaign that emphasizes you’re still here, and focused on serving them, while emphasizing any long-term steps your company is taking to ensure customer health and safety.

• When seeking out new customers: Focus on the low-hanging fruit, including previous customers and the warmest leads.

Marketing Tactic #2: Micro vs. Macro

Given that COVID-19 hit so quickly, many businesses have large marketing initiatives that were only partially executed. With budgets being cut, it’s not feasible to finish implementing these campaigns.

• Moving forward, emphasize smaller, highly targeted campaigns that can be executed quickly: This will minimize the staffing, creative and media investment, saving some cost.     

• This will also shorten the timeline between marketing execution and ROI: Doing this will allow you to get a faster revenue infusion. In addition, it will better insulate your budget against lost resources from large marketing campaigns if there are future waves of COVID-19 fallout.

Marketing Tactic #3: Digital First

COVID-19 may permanently change customers’ attitudes toward distance. As a result, low-touch or contactless options may become the rule, and digital has a natural advantage in this area.

Review and punch up your digital presence. For example, if your website is not mobile-friendly, consider revising it using a cost-effective content management system with built-in responsive templates such as Squarespace or WordPress.

Marketing Tactic #4: Be a Storyteller

In a post-COVID-19 world of tighter household and business budgets, your customers will be more discerning with where they put their money.

• Revisit your brand story: What makes your company unique? If a potential customer sees your company’s product or service next to a competitor’s, does yours stand out?

• Communicate your story widely through compelling content narratives: It’s not enough to include a few paragraphs of copy on your website’s About page. You need to show it. This might mean developing a series of short testimonial YouTube videos highlighting long-term customers, or creating image ads that emphasize your core values – both of which can be posted to your social media feeds and highly targeted to a broader audience.

Marketing Tactic #5: Streamline Content Development

In the new normal, every marketing initiative will need to be as efficient as possible to help minimize development cost.

• This will require more long-range planning: For example, filming two types of videos during the same shoot day to save production cost. Vaccine has used this approach for our health care clients, by shooting PSA-style educational videos with each physician at the end of their planned profile video filming. By planning ahead and asking strategic questions about each doctor’s specialty, we were able to generate short, social-friendly videos on various conditions and treatment options – while significantly increasing the health system’s available video content for both their website and social media feeds.

• Develop content templates to streamline creative development: In the new normal, your team will need to do more with less. By developing templates that can be adapted easily to meet the needs of different projects, you can decrease your development cost while reducing development time. Templates can be used in any medium, from creating a layered Photoshop file for Facebook ads to developing a blog post template that has guiding notes for copywriting and search engine optimization.

Marketing Tactic #6: Repurpose Content

In this new age of uncertainty, campaigns will be put under the microscope to look for potential waste. In addition to the tactics above, which can help ensure that you are producing the most effective, efficient campaigns, you’ll also need to look for ways to repurpose content.

• Plan for multiple mediums upfront: For example, develop a reference sheet template that maps out all planned elements of the campaign. Break out the main headlines and other copy snippets, and the main imagery, to make it easy for your team to pull what they need and adapt it to different mediums. This can include additional notes that guide your team and help save time, such as social media post-writing and character-count guidelines.

• Produce in a way that allows for easier adaptation: For example, if you’re producing a longer video, plan and edit it into discrete sections, each of which could be used as a standalone short video on social media.

Getting Back to Basics

In many ways, these marketing tactics involve simplifying your marketing operations. The more you can be nimble, minimize budget risk and position your company to flex with COVID-19 or any similar future challenges, the more you’ll be able to ensure a strong customer base and longevity.

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Vaccine Creative is a hybrid agency that has worked with some of the biggest (and smallest) brands. We specialize in developing thoughtful, effective campaigns that don’t bust the budget. If you’re looking for more guidance on how to get the most out of your marketing in a post-COVID-19 world, contact us.

About Jim

Jim TerMarsch is Founder and Creative Director of Vaccine Creative. He has 24 years of advertising experience both as copywriter and creative director. He has won numerous industry awards including 20 Emmys for his TV series that’s been seen by over 30 million viewers. His experience spans brand campaigns for companies both huge and not-so-huge, immersive consumer installations for the 50th anniversary of the Mustang and others, branded television, customer-experience training and social media.