How Marketers Can Prepare for a Post-pandemic Future
Voxburner Content Team
We don’t want to jinx things, but with the vaccine rollout underway, we’re hopeful that a return to somewhat-normal could be on the cards for the latter half of 2020. This brings about new questions for the marketing industry, which had to transform its strategies overnight 11 months ago. Now we’re faced with the challenge of adapting yet again to an uncertain future. We’re under pressure to predict which of the trends and transformations emerging during the pandemic will last, and which new habits will be discarded as soon as we can hug our friends again.
On Voxburner+ platform, senior marketers from brands including Nando’s, MTV and Skyscanner discussed what’s next as they prepare their marketing strategy for all possible versions of how 2021 will play out. We’re sharing some ideas and advice for how marketers can tackle the conundrum of planning for a year where anything could happen.
Be prepared, but be reactive
The best marketing strategies combine forward-planning with the ability to be agile when needed. We’re not recommending you leave your homework to the last minute, but it’s important to leave space in your marketing plan to enable you to react to events as they unfold, and ensure that your brand remains relevant to the switched-on Gen Z audience. Start with allocating space in your content and social calendar for reactive content, and check that your team has everything they need to respond quickly to trending events or changed business circumstances without roadblocks such as lengthy approval processes.
Understand your brand
The brands that have weathered the storm the best over the past year are those who already knew what they stood for pre-COVID, so they instinctively knew what would be the right move for their brand and their audience when forced to make quick decisions. As we wait for lockdown to end, make the most of this downtime to ensure everyone in your marketing team and the wider business is on the same page, and that how you see your brand aligns with audience perception and consumer needs.
Get up-to-date on the trends of 2021
The start of the year always sees a slew of new trend reports and research released, using consumer insights to detect the mass movements that will shape the year ahead. Now is a great time to immerse yourself in this research and look for opportunities where your brand could step in to serve a growing need or gap in the market. Our UK edition of our annual Youth Trends Report is now on the Voxburner+ platform covering all this and more for our premium subscribers.
To hear how our community of youth marketing experts are preparing for the unpredictable, subscribe to our Voxburner+ platform to watch all the footage from previous YMS events, and many more youth marketing topics.
