Top 5 Agency Trends During COVID-19
As we know, Covid -19 has greatly impacted digital agencies of all sizes across the globe. But due to separate business models, the small and large agencies are feeling the impact in different ways. While large agencies might be more concerned about factors like number of employees and overheads, smaller agencies are more concerned about losing their clients.
Here we have discussed about 5 strategies that a small agency can focus on to face this difficult economic situation:
1) Adapt a data driven approach
We are aware that data is necessary even before we start the optimization of any marketing campaign. In today’s situation, small agencies will find a data driven approach very useful in developing deep, meaningful insights to deliver great customer experience. These days many platforms and tools are available to measure and optimize the performance of a campaign.
Key drivers for data driven approach – 53% want data to be more customer centric where as 49% would like to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing investments using this approach.
Top goals for marketers for data driven strategy – almost 70% feel that it will help in personalizing the customer experience and 43% would use it to acquire new customers.
2) Create more value wherever possible
It is important to identify how you can create more value for your client which may also help you to retain their business. It will be good to review your client’s portfolio, to see if there are any additional services that you can offer them (for Free or at a reduced cost). If required, you may broaden your skills which could help in sustaining your business during COVID-19 and beyond.
5 P’s that agencies should look at to create more value for clients:
a) Profiling
b) Personalization
c) Performance
d) Partnerships
e) Pull strategy
3) Explore new avenues
One of the key initiatives that small agencies can look to combat the COVID-19 situation is by exploring new avenues. This could be in terms of either offering new services or prospecting new industries or recommend new channels to clients (like email marketing, blog content etc).
As part of a survey, almost 30% agencies have opted to offer new services and another 30% have recommended new channels to their clients.
4) Continue or increase outsourcing
For small agencies, outsourcing has allowed a lot of flexibility during this crisis. It has not only helped for client retention but also for better management of reduced work load during such a situation. Outsurcing has also helped small agencies to be prepared for future scenario when situation improves and more projects start coming in.
As part of a survey, more than 70% of agencies will look to either continue or increase outsourcing during these times.
5) Go Live on social media
In addition to sending out an initial Covid-19 notice to your customers, it’s important that you demonstrate daily that you’re living up to the promise of being there for your customers. The best way to show your customers that you’re working for them is to have live interactive sessions with them on your social media channels. These could be in the form of short 10 minutes FB live session, where you could discuss just any casual topic or any good news.
Some of the interesting stats which will help the agencies in long run:
a) 78% of salespeople using social media perform better than their peers.
b) The outbound selling strategy of cold calling only has a 2.5% success rate.
c) 84% of executives use contacts and info from social networks as part of their purchase process.
d) 31% of B2B professionals said that social selling allowed them to build deeper relationships with their clients.
Conclusion
There might be a lot of uncertainty around whether to keep spending on digital marketing during these tough times. However, another reality is, due to this outbreak, each day more and more businesses are moving online. So if small digital marketing agencies can focus on the above mentioned strategies, it will ultimately benefit them in the long run.
Sources:
https://www.buzzboard.com/how-marketing-agencies-are-changing-their-messaging-in-response-to-covid-19/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/06/01/small-agency-strategies-during-covid-19
https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.mediapost.com/uploads/ImpactOfCOVID19OnDigitalAgencies.pdf
https://www.vendasta.com/blog/covid-19-action-plan-for-agencies/
http://customerstrategiesfortomorrow.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-10p-of-digital-marketing.html