The coronavirus pandemic has hit worldwide – across most industries and
businesses. With the increasing crisis, market leaders are now shifting their
priorities in order to stay up and running.
Recently LinkedIn analyzed the current market status and published a study in collaboration with Vision Critical. The report titled, “COVID Marketing Impact and How Marketers are Responding” revealed that COVID-19 has pushed a majority of marketers to rethink their marketing strategies. Around 450 marketers were surveyed to understand how this pandemic is affecting them, what the top challenges are, and how they are managing it.
As per the statistics, nearly 76% of marketers are being forced to change and restructure
marketing priorities. Other complications in businesses include – budget cuts (74%),
switching in-person to online events (69%), and advertising investments and its planning
(69%).
With more marketing functionalities shifting to online mode, about 67% of marketers have
increased their investment in webinars. Similarly, around 44% are putting their capital on
online video, and nearly 34% are increasing their search investment. Besides, social media
marketing is highly becoming an interest for many, and hence, about 39% of the
respondents said they are investing in paid social media campaigns.
How Covid-19 is shaping B2B Marketing
It is no secret that marketing events, seminars, etc. have drastically gone down since the
beginning of 2020. Many marketers noted their tactical mixes are varying amid the crisis,
and the marketing channels with the least interest are – events/experiential (80%), out of
home (39%), and TV (33%). In its essence, about 72% of marketers cited budget reductions as the primary reason for backing out digital marketing investments. Even the marketing messaging approaches have already been shifted. Nearly 47% of marketers agreed that they had increased the focus on human-centric and emotional content. About 31% said they are emphasizing on logical as well as product-centered content.
Nearly 67% of marketers revealed that the virus outbreak had a minimum of “some impact” on their marketing campaign strategies. However, only 18% reported that they had a “major impact.” As noted by Fred Han, in the company blog post, “While many of the findings were more or less expected, we do see a broader theme playing out at a high level. For the marketers we polled, during the COVID-19 crisis, factors forcing strategic shifts are posing greater difficulty than those impacting execution.”
Marketing Strategies 2020 – A Blend of Old school and Millennials
