We have seen lockdown’s 1st phase and now we are going through its 2nd version where its also not predictable and foreseeable how prolonging this lockdown would be in the future. During this time all of us have realized and experienced the other side of the coin i.e. the health of the businesses which are neither digitally existing in terms of their website, social media channels nor having sound planning of sustaining their business during and post lockdown era.
It’s really tough to predict how the businesses will be surviving especially a large portion of small businesses, SMEs, startups during this tough time, not talking about mid-level companies who will also experience its bitterness but would be able to digest for some time with their contingency plan and timely corrective measures.
But its certainly worth mentioning about those businesses whether small, mid or large enterprises who were already having their robust presence on digital channels and comparatively active with their strong visibility, engagement, online reputation and a robust systematic annual planning of their digital marketing. This type of businesses can be termed as Digitally Super Active who have been managing their show by continuously engaging their stakeholders through their strategic digital content planning of creating and maintaining their brand reputation and recall in the eyes of their customers.
This digitally super active class will be able to manage and handle their post lockdown era in a comparatively smoother way with tapering down and up their spending to meet their objectives.
Now let’s consider the status of those businesses who never thought of their digital presence or were not actively considering this or those who were considering and understanding the importance but couldn’t take the first step towards it. It’s going to be tough for this type of category as dependency on traditional channels and direct customer contact planning will be at the back seat for an unpredictable period post lockdown and depending on traditional media would be a costly affair and ineffective due to side effects of social distancing and social alienation.
It’s not essential but would become a necessity to create and develop the presence digitally to be competitively relevant and present in the market. It’s evident that during the lockdown, everything has become standstill but Digital media is becoming more aggressive and relevant and more and more people are consuming data on mobile by spending their time on social channels especially Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and exploring content on OTT channels like Netflix and Hotstar etc.
People are spending more time learning, re-learning, educating and experimenting on YouTube and Tiktok watching and featuring themselves into videos hence they are actively visible online to be engaged by brands innovatively.
This time could become an eye-opener for all of us to start thinking and acting upon the plan to give a final shape to kick-off utilizing the lockdown time in favour of your business. We hope that everything will be alright in some time and we all would bounce back much bolder and stronger. Stay healthy, stay safe!
