Strategies for Effectively Pivoting Your Marketing in New Year

Congratulations, you made it through 2020! It was a year like no other, but we’ve come out the other side a little stronger, a little wiser, and ready to make the best of the new year ahead of us.

Looking back, 2020 was an especially challenging year in the world of marketing. From everyone being stuck at home and using the internet to connect with each other to the inception of new social media platforms, marketers were thrown every curveball in the books. Typically, businesses start planning goals and action steps for the new year based on projections and insights from the previous one, but 2020 gave us everything but the typical experience. We can find a silver lining in this, though, and even use these extenuating circumstances to inform more resilient and innovative decisions moving forward through 2021 and beyond.

So how can we take all this crazy from 2020 and use it to help our companies, firms, and businesses move forward with greater success? Here are six tips on pivoting your marketing strategy in changing and uncertain times:

Know What You Can Plan For, And What You Can’t

If 2020 has taught marketers anything, it’s that plans sometimes have to be thrown out the window. We all went into 2020 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with our plans, and most of them didn’t help us much in the past year. However, looking back, there were a few things that stayed constant. Here are just some of the events and interactions that we can reliably say can be planned for, even though crazy change and unpredictable occurrences like the pandemic:

• Holidays
• Seasonality of engagement and purchasing waves
• Social media calendaring
• Launches
• Communication with your clients

When big change comes and many things are out of our control, one of the best things we can do is focus on what we can control. Not only does it help focus and center our business strategy, but it helps us keep our mindset and morale relatively stable in trying times.

Focus on Your Mission Statement

When you founded your company or started your business, you had a vision. And chances are, you wrote that down in the form of a mission statement — what you wanted to achieve with your business. Your mission statement encompasses your values, your goals, and a system by which you can measure the success of your business.

When we hit rocky or unsure times, it can be helpful to go back to basics. It helps focus, streamline, and clarify your strategy and action plan in a way that will not only be effective, but that will leave you feeling fulfilled. In this case, that means going back to your mission statement. When looking to pivot your strategy, filter each decision through your mission statement to make sure that you are not allowing the circumstances to push you off course from your values.

Revisit Your Target Demographic

Something else we saw in 2020 was a huge change in online demographics. Both older and younger people were online more and more often — and on more and more social media sites — to connect and engage with friends and family, and just to fill time. All of this change may mean that your ideal audience has shifted, grown, or changed from what it was prior to 2020. In order to make a strong marketing plan for 2021, take a good look at who your audience is now, and make adjustments to include potential new sources for an expanded client base into your marketing strategy.

Create an Experience

As time goes on, we see more and more that customer experience is a huge factor in consumer decisions to buy, and this has only increased with people being stuck at home. Since they cannot go out and experience the world, consumers are looking to support companies that fill that void for them. Engaging content that doesn’t necessarily focus on selling, but rather on community engagement and an immersive consumer experience, is going to be huge going forward.

Try New Mediums

Digital

Obviously, the digital world is expanding rapidly. Whether that’s starting a new social media channel for your company, or creating a digital product either for sale or as a lead magnet, growing your online presence is going to be a huge piece of successful 2021 marketing. Additionally, look for some new advertisement placements — Netflix saw its biggest subscriber growth ever in the first six months of 2020, and streaming has seen a huge jump as well.

Tangible

Even though digital media seems like it is king right now, that doesn’t mean that digital products are the only path to take. Consumers are still looking to purchase tangible, quality products, whether that’s books, home decor, or anything else. Because we live in a mostly digital world right now, tangible goods can be even more needed and sought after. Even if it’s something as small as a brochure or pamphlet of your services, putting something they can see and feel in your customers’ hands will make a great and lasting impression.

Stay Flexible

Of course, the most important marketing lesson we’ve learned in 2020 is that flexibility is key. If you stay too rigid in your business plans, that can spell disaster for your company. Being able to pivot your strategy is not only an essential part of running a business but an essential part of running a business in a changeable climate like the one we are in right now. So while it can be difficult, flexibility needs to be one of the highest priorities when executing any of these tips — be ready, willing, and able to change your strategy when the circumstances call for it.

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Image credit: Piqsels @ Creative Commons