2020 has been an uncanny year for many reasons and advertising isn’t an exception. Marketers
have had to deal with rapidly changing behaviors and a stagnant marketing environment at the
same time. It was a tough time overall and deciding how to reach audiences the right way was a
critical moment of truth that shaped the digital landscape of advertising for the next couple of
years.
Several researches have been conducted to explore the current climate with customers and key
challenges faced by businesses, to find solutions to these challenges, and drive strategic
change for businesses. According to Facebook Business, there are four key challenges that
digital marketers will face moving forward from this time, and those are:
· Decreased spending:
In terms of the economic environment, many consequences lead to decreased spending
in the marketing budget of many companies. Ceased businesses and closed physical
stores lead to a large decrease in business sales. Although the overall Ecommerce ratio
has increased drastically, companies that weren’t up to date and completely utilizing the
digital platforms suffered the consequences of the lockdown and reduced company as
well as customer spending.
· Unclear marketing insights:
This point illustrates the major change that has occurred and is true for any aspect of a
business, not just marketing, and that is the rapidly changing consumer behavior. Even
with brands trying their best to keep up with the needs and requirements of the
consumers in real-time, there was a lot going on at once to focus and clear the picture
around a particular set of insights as the primary changes and clear market learnings to
follow through with strategic changes.
· Inconsistent audience engagement:
Apart from just the mare change in the routine and social setting, the psychological
effects of this global phenomenon led to people reconsidering many things. The layer of
uncertainty that overtook the collective audience leads to inconsistency in audience
engagement with the brand’s products. Not only that but the viewing and spending
fluctuated a lot from none to a lot in a matter of time. Capturing consumer attention gets
tough during times of change but it is important to consistently do so to build a recall
factor with your customers.
· Weaknesses in mindshare:
Building on the above point, change, and brands adjusting to that change are two main
things that determine how consumers are going to remember your brand. Due to the
unforeseeable nature of this year’s lineup of events, close to no brand of company was
ready to cope up with the changes with lead to reduced and distracted consumer
mindshare.
All these are common consequences that were felt throughout the year and that seem to stick
around for a good period of time. Businesses and companies need to look inwards into their
practices and outwards onto consumer thought process and behavior to understand the true
market demand that is going to benefit them.
