In such uncertain times, companies are worried as to how to not go into a situation of being ruined financially. They should leverage both digitalization and technology to address the problems and disruptions caused by COVID-19. There are related issues as well, such as supply chain issues and store closures. Times like these, demand great customer service and e-commerce experiences.

Covid-19 could be an accelerant to digital transformation.. Yes this holds true.

No matter where you look today, evidence of COVID-19 is everywhere. The big-name companies are also worried about how they will continue to do business. Many of them have started approaching digital marketing companies in India as well for expert advice.

This surrounding uncertainty is clear. And at the same time,there are many questions arising, such as:

• How e-commerce will benefit?
• How will coronavirus impact supply chains and logistics?
• What’s the best way forward in digital transformation?
• How can financial ruin be avoided

So how can the work continue smoothly…How can companies avoid a massive financial dip?

How can companies do this by going digital?

Collaborating in a Virtual Office

In order to generate financial gain, companies need to sustain the pandemic economically, hence, work needs to be done. As digitalization is the thing, more and more people every year are learning the benefits of working from home. In fact, Global Workplace Analytics reports that working from home grew 140% from 2005 to 2019, and these figures exclude self-employed individuals. And now, those numbers are touching the sky, as hundreds of thousands of people are asked to go home. Managing together, all the remote workers can be difficult on management, as well. In light of the situation brought in by COVID19, concept of remote work and virtual employees are a new reality.

Regardless of the industry or company size, it’s definitely tough to hold an effective meeting –plenty of research goes into it. Even software development companies in India should take the suggestions given here for consideration.

To be honest, virtual conferences are excellent ways to keep the workers’ team on the same page, and with the work done, they are also proven to generate revenue. Considering the coronavirus and the deadly effects and  reach, in-person conferencing is currently not an option.

Yes, of course, the overhead costs are actually slashed, but companies can still offer the same or greater value.

Events Cancelled Due to COVID19 bring in the fear of financial losses. This should be avoided by going digital.

Major events, business events around the world have been cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 uncertainty. Marketing events bring in tens of thousands of individuals and businesses. All have been scrapped. All around the world, cancellations of business events are resulting in tech giants and other companies to rethink everything, and world of work. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are asking employees to work from home.

The world of digital marketing could perhaps be the hardest hit and the most needed thing right now.

In other words, the largest companies have to continue, by conducting their normal business processes virtually as opposed to in-office. This will prevent companies from going into losses, because, well, WORK will be done. They will sustain the situation, economically.

STAY CONNECTED TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

Companies should stay in touch with customers digitally

Staying in touch with companies’ clients and customers is essential. Digital is the way. However, this might not be really the best time to be hard on sales. Instead, companies should showcase brand personality and support customers. This will keep the brand visibility and business preference high.

RETHINK YOUR CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

Rethink campaigns digitally

Advertising campaigns are perfect to ensure that consumers are aware of companies and brands. We are in that situation when most people will be spending more time on their phone or laptop. Hence this is the time to ensure that digital campaigns are in the peak. What companies should do is to optimise the budget split, and ensuring that there are the right keywords.

Brand interaction, digitally, to be the Priority

Now is the best time for companies to challenge, and think of digital ways to connect with clients and consumers. They should think how they can offer any of their physical services online. These solutions suite the current market. They also protect the business as the world enters an increasingly digital-first consumer market.

Preparing for the recovery

At some point, the spread of COVID-19 will start to decrease. Markets will enter a recovery stage as we return to normality. This transition period will require the right messaging for ads, landing pages, homepage and social media.

We are all facing an unpredictable period, and disruption will affect multiple industries. However, long-term campaign planning, based on what stays the same rather than what changes, is still a must.

Companies will and should shift the sales strategy to online

Chinese companies who were forced to face the reality of coronavirus shutdowns of production, provide a plan for weathering this phase. As business stores shut their doors, business owners shifted their sales strategy online, to avoid heavy losses.

In Wuhan, the cosmetics company Lin Qingxuan shut 50% of its stores, but still the business brand’s beauty advisors resorted to digital platforms like WeChat to engage customers digitally, and increase online sales. If a company is closing its business store, it should find ways to let the employees earn a paycheck by selling on social media. Also, putting the email list to proper use or using a video tool to reach new leads, might be good ideas as well.

Now, will COVID 19 accelerate the digital transformation journey of companies?

Absolutely. We generally tend to think about digital transformation being driven by three factors.

1) Fast changing human behaviour: Let us take an example based in India itself. The advent of internet obviously led to change in businesses. In India, it was solely the mobile telephony that led to changes in businesses and people’s behavior.

2) Technology: This and only this made it all possible.

3) Business models: When the technology changes and evolves rapidly, it leads to new business models. Twenty years ago, the situation was entirely different from what it is now. There are many such examples of new behaviour-led, tech-enabled, business models.

In healthcare services, and also in other services, say banking and e-tailing, we are seeing huge numbers in the run, in terms of adoption of digital systems, and digital platforms. There is huge adaptation to and adoption of digitization, even among the elderly.

Let us not say that Covid-19 will be the reason for the digital transformation, but the virus could be yet another major accelerant.

Now..

A lot of people actually do equate digital transformation with an IT project. Well, digital transformation is not a place that has to be reached. It is, but a journey. And almost all companies are there, but at different points of this journey. The most advanced tech firm like Microsoft is transforming itself, to be even more digital.

Every company is now moving the business to cloud.

So there are challenges and challenges in digital transformation.

The one challenge with digital transformation is that most of the companies have a clearly wrong incentive. They have the wrong culture as well. A lot of firms and businesses think of tech and IT to be all about risk and cost. What is the target mindset then? The mindset is to keep the risk down and the cost low.

In these’s times, technology is rapidly moving from risk and cost to value and differentiation.

And this is exactly how technology and digitalisation are going to give the biggest advantage.

There are still a lot of companies in the risk and cost stage.

A massive upskilling needs to happen for a company to digitally transform. But in tough times like these, training budgets get cut first.

So how do companies meet this challenge?

The trick is to identify the raw skills and capabilities people have, the gap they have and to match it with capabilities the companies have. So, co-creating with clients is the major trick.

To deduce a good thought, let us say that transformation is not something we can do for somebody. we have to do it with somebody.

Planning for the long term is important to avoid the losses

The economies all over the world, are already starting to shake, the spread of the coronavirus is still expanding throughout the world, creating an effect that will impact the world for some good amount of time.

According to a report from SmallBizTrends, “27% of businesses expect the coronavirus to have a moderate to high impact on their revenue. Another 30% expect the virus to have a moderate to high impact on their supply chain.”

So listen up, companies! Communicate with suppliers, investors, and business partners on a daily basis to learn how to start to execute or implement all the safeguards that do help, while the officials do work to contain the COVID-19.

For small businesses? It might be a while until small businesses get back to proper business.

Now, as mentioned, to avoid financial losses and ruins, the requirement is to go digital. And it is also about shifting few things.

It is all about shifting the messaging for the marketing during COVID-19, and in this way, managing customer expectations. It is about aiding business clients survive the storm, as well.

Companies should Think outside the box

Stand out in the efforts to drive leads and retain business clients. Companies should organize virtual meetings, brainstorm, and think about new ideas.

These ideas should range from creating new service offerings, testing new channels for business or campaigning for a client’s goods, or an out of the box strategic approach for a new campaign and promoting it across various channels for increased reach and visibility.

Go back up the funnel

As an attempt to engage, and soothe the customers, companies should try running more engagement, awareness, and video streams Facebook and Instagram campaigns for the clients as they are way less expensive. Obviously, companies do not want to do hard selling via conversion campaigns right now.As days progress, we are seeing more and more people engaging with ads. People are slowly beginning to come back. They are beginning to make good purchases through such upper-funnel campaigns, even with warmer retargeting audiences.

How about altering the focus?

Sure, it’s about organisations as agencies and wanting to survive, but companies also want their clients to survive. Yes that is obvious. So that’s what companies should be focusing on.

The trick is to shift the focus from hard selling and stressing on the characteristics of products, to the customer, and how they would be feeling about the particular product/service. While it’s still early, companies should resort to this. If so, then the results would be promising for the clients.

Communicate with clients proactively. This is the key.

If your agency has been affected by coronavirus, either by having to switch your teams to working remotely, if their account management team has changed in size due to layoffs or furloughs,it’s important to be proactive and to contact each with a personalized note to inform them of any changes to their accounts. If your agency is fortunate to not have had any changes at this time, aside from working remotely, it would be comforting to inform your clients none the less and keep them updated on the status of your business as well. It’s a time for trust and collaboration in order for businesses to succeed.

While going digital with brands, it is most important to check for insensitive words

Companies do know not to use overt puns, but they should also keep in mind that there exist several words and phrases that were completely harmless before the situation of COVID-19. Let us see the words on which companies need to be careful while going digital:

• Killer (as in a “killer deal”)
• Contagious (like “how to generate contagious content”)
• Health or checkup-related terms (“give your budget a pulse check”)
• Spread
• Contagious
• Infectious
• Viral
• Gather
• Event

Lastly, companies should think contribution, not conversion

This is important for all companies. However, for the less or non-essential businesses with respect to the COVID-19, there are still methods to stay relevant. However, the companies’s motive here should not be to get more business but to continue offering contributive value to the public or audience.

Well, the people are actually just trying to say afloat right now. So in this situation, companies should think contribution, not conversion.

However, running into massive financial losses might not be the best thing for industries right now. Or, never, to say the least.

So go digital with your company. As mentioned earlier, Covid-19 may be that required accelerant, to transform the world into a digital space.