As the rest of the world struggles with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, marketing executives look forward to a possible recovery and new ways to meet changing consumer demands.
Customers opted to shop online during last year’s Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Amazon’s revenues increased by 60 percent, totalling US$4.8 billion. Even no one can predict how long it will take to recover from a pandemic.
As a result, these marketing executives are confronted with a new set of challenges, including how to continue customizing the consumer experience in light of rapidly changing behaviours and economic uncertainty and how to reach consumers in a way that reflects the brand’s overall intent.
Digital-First Business Model
COVID-19 shifted the way companies think about digital transformation. They must evaluate their resiliency and agility and implement a turnaround plan that is consistent with their corporate principles.
Since consumers hold brands responsible for delivering on the commitments they make, remaining true to a brand’s mission is much more critical than being inauthentic.
CMOs will be able to push the “digital-first” business model even further in 2021. This is a substantial multi-stakeholder transition, and CMOs will have to position themselves in the shoes of the CEO to schedule, organize, and implement such changes.
To help with this, CMOs must seek out technology alliances that can offer more for less while retaining the brand’s development advantage.
CMOs also have to show themselves as Chief Growth Officers, reflecting a new integrated mantra of marketing-led sales and service, rather than the conventional marketing method as enabler and sales as the engine.
Hyper-Personalisation After the Pandemic
To rise to the challenge and deliver hyper-personalised customer interactions, retailers and brands will need to tighten their grip on data under their control even further.
Studying consumer actions from CDPs will become much more relevant to assess which habits, such as curbside pickup, reflect a lasting improvement and which do not. Businesses would then have to recreate some interactions online based on the data.
