The year 2020 was an administrative megastorm of the likes no living marketer had seen before. Business titans of all sizes were cast onto the tumultuous digital marketing waters by an unexpected pandemic gale. What sailors emerged was a group who had quelled fears, shored up their technological rigging, and sailed forth on a sea of shifting customer behaviours. Below, we’ll explore how the UK’s digital marketing fishery has changed under the COVID winds.
Setting Sail on the Digital Tides
The first massive wave of change was the surge in companies transitioning to digital platforms. Small businesses, once cloistered behind high street facades, now found themselves in a competitive digital marketplace alongside industry leviathans. This shift wasn’t just a matter of necessity; it represented a dawn of new opportunities. Like schools of fish moving in unison, brands quickly pivoted their marketing strategies to include e-commerce, personalized DTC marketing ideas, and live video streams.
The Digital-First Consumer Shoals
The second wave was the swarming changes in consumer behaviour. It was as if the entire British consumer landscape had metamorphosed into a rainbow-hued reef. More people turned to online shopping, video streaming, and social media for entertainment and purchasing power. Businesses, keen-eyed like dolphins, quick to adapt, rapidly changed their advertising tactics, incorporating social responsibility and brand-new digital trends to keep pace with their audience’s newfound habits.
Navigating the Local SEO Currents
The third wave emphasised the importance of local SEO. It was a call to arms for businesses to chart their course by their local surroundings. The ‘support local’ movement became a life raft for many enterprises, and businesses that had navigated their SEO towards local visibility weathered the storm better than those alienated from their coastal roots. Business owners became like local fishermen, casting their local SEO nets wider and more strategically to catch the attention of nearby digital consumers. The local buzz is very much still alive, and you can contact King Kong to make the most of it.
Ebbing and Flowing Content Marketing Channels
Lastly, the fourth wave was a cascade of changes in content marketing. Here, we marvelled at the adaptation of the craft to the changing tides of customer interest. Email, website content, and social media presences became the vessels through which businesses communicated with their audience. Like well-tuned sails, these channels needed to catch the winds of change, shifting towards emotional, informative, and supportive content that resonated with the audience’s newfound needs and worries.
The COVID tempest was no small squall—it reshaped the core of the UK’s digital marketing practices. But just as the sea carries fashion onto the shore, so too did the pandemic carry innovating winds into the sails of the digital marketer. By recognizing these changes, we can prepare for future squalls and calms in the marketing sea, setting new courses and exploring new isles. The horizon may have changed, but the captains of UK’s digital marketing are ready to chart this bold new course.
