It’s no secret that COVID-19 has thrown plenty of curveballs at businesses of all shapes and sizes, from figuring out how to manage a remote workforce to managing messaging in the Coronaverse it’s hasn’t been easy to stay focused on strategic thinking with so many tactical ‘fires’ that demanded our immediate attention.
Challenge #1: Agencies are expected to produce the same or better results with less budget and resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant reductions in advertising and marketing spend. The Standard Media Index shows that advertising and media expenditure dropped by 35.4% in April 2020, compared to the same period last year. Across the board, that equated to a decrease of over $330 million in advertising spend – and that’s for just one month in Australia!
Challenge #2: Agencies and publishers need to be more agile to meet the demands of ongoing changes to advertising spends and plans, even after budget and resources have been committed.
This decrease in spending is compounded by the uncertainty of the current climate. With restrictions and market demands changing so rapidly, the COVID-19 Digital Ad Impact survey by IAB Australia states that in March and April this year, 86% of brands changed their advertising spend and over 50% reviewed their plans daily.
At the end of the day, however, those businesses that overcome challenges with a positive and productive mindset will likely come out the other side stronger than ever. And here at UEC, we’re perfectly positioned to weather any storm.
Challenge #3: Business-to-business (B2B) companies are investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to automate their sales force and reduce operational costs as the sales environment changes.
Our Salesforce.com CRM software is just one example of this; automating, optimising and reducing costs of campaign implementation, providing more detailed ROI reporting and accuracy, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Challenge #4: There is pressure to understand audience data to produce contextually relevant marketing that delivers the right message at the right time to increase conversion.
We use a wealth of audience data extracted from platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook, Google Ads, email marketing and Content Management Systems to create Personas – detailed representations of customer each with its own personal attributes, device, channel and customer journey. We build out campaigns using our clearly defined and curated sales funnel matrix and, once approved and implemented, we use advanced visual dashboards and reports to analyse all aspects of the campaign to ensure we’re hitting the mark; feeding back these valuable insights to clients in a transparent, easy-to-understand format.
Contact us today and let us show you how we help you overcome these challenges.
A big shout out to Gemma Giam who provided the in-depth research for this article.