As the world’s day-to-day routines, economies, and lifestyles are reshuffled, what you once thought you knew about your brand’s user base may likely not hold as true as it did pre-COVID-19: You are not alone.
As brands and marketers alike aim to decipher what the new “performance norm” is, processes need to be re-evaluated as consumer sentiment and trends are rapidly changing due to new information being released by the government, scientific community, and media.
Actionable Data Insights
To help navigate these unprecedented waters, we have created guidelines to help better empower your brand with actionable data insights:
- Keep It Fresh: During these chaotic times, brands need to focus on the “now,” looking more so at days and weeks, rather than months and years. By doing this, you will be able to better interpret your data for the current consumer state, and not be led astray by misleading past trends — influenced by outside COVID and news media factors — that are no longer applicable.
- Be Fast & Nimble: When you extract meaningful insights from your data, you must move fast. Many brands no longer have the luxury of taking the time to build complex campaigns and measurement strategies. These processes can take weeks for stakeholders to implement, and by the time they are ready to launch they will be yesterday’s news. Time is of the essence to capitalize on your data while catering to your consumer’s evolving needs.
- Define Short-Term Success: While launching micro initiatives and strategies, brands will need to be able to make quick decisions on whether or not campaigns are succeeding. For this reason, brands must further embrace short-term secondary KPIs to supplement their longer-term performance goals. Short-term KPIs (micro-conversions, session durations, bounce rates, etc) will provide a more immediate feedback loop to help predict traffic quality and the likelihood of campaign success as defined by your longer-term KPIs.
How To Proceed
As the scale and impact of COVID-19 continue to grow and evolve each day, it is just as important for brand data strategies to grow and evolve with it.
By taking a step back to reposition your way of thinking to be more in line with the present, as opposed to the past (historical trends), you can begin to take a firmer grasp on understanding how current events impact your user base and, in response, quickly launch and measure timely and relevant marketing initiatives.
If you would like to further discuss your brand’s COVID-19 marketing strategy playbook, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we will be happy to help.
— Joseph Belafonte, Director Of Analytics at Direct Agents