With social distancing in this crisis, time spent on social media and digital media in general has increased and is an important element to consider when investing in digital marketing. In a recent emarketer report, they report that in the USA the time that people dedicate to the media has increased by an average of 1 hour per day, an 8% increase.
Time on social media has been the modern antidote to the distancing that COVID-19 has forced us into.
The effects of coronavirus on the time people spend in the media have been evident. Some usage patterns appear to carry the same trends, only with higher volume; but others will generate post-crisis changes that are worth taking into account.
The time spent on TV that was falling is the only medium that has changed its trend, however, once people start to go out on the street again, it will return to the level it had and surely with the trend to the downward trend. short.
The time spent on social networks has grown and the time spent on a smartphone and consuming digital video has also grown, a residual effect of this is that many people will have known sites, profiles, channels they did not know before and now it could stay as a captive audience for them. In the case of social networks, people are spending on average almost 13% more time on them and in the case of digital video, people are spending 12% more time consuming it.
Nobody has a magic wand and there are different opinions.
On the one hand, there are those who think that this has already generated a strong enough change in habits and that we will no longer return to the old ways. But there are others who, despite the increase in digital habits that have occurred during the pandemic, hope that by 2021 the levels will return to how they were before it. The truth is that, for the remainder of 2020, higher volumes of visits to the networks are anticipated and that represents a good opportunity for brands.
As of June / July 2020, with the pandemic already subsiding, many brands will have to resume their digital marketing strategies to seek the recovery of their volumes of activity and the fact of having larger audiences on the networks is something that can be taken advantage of.
And, on the other hand, there are those who think that, by being able to meet again, much of the digital world is going to be abandoned for the sake of a regained human contact and the desire to go out, go to the stores, see the products and be with people. And that the time on social networks could decrease.
While we see what happens over time on social networks, what is estimated with greater certainty is that TV will surely lose the momentum it has achieved.
In many cases, the window of opportunity will last the rest of 2020, the duration of the opportunity will depend on the sector and whether it is a B2C or a B2B
The investment in digital advertising, that is specifically the payment to media, has fallen, which has caused the cost per click and the cost per thousand to have decreased, this coupled with the fact that the number of ads has also decreased and there is less competition. Very soon it will be a good time to resume advertising campaigns and the secret will be to do it before prices rise again to take advantage of two things: less cost and less competition and to overheat the market to prepare for the recovery
What is clear is that companies must take much more seriously:
- Your overall digital presence strategy
- Organic positioning on Google and social networks
- Have an online store or at least facilitate online payment of invoices issued in a traditional way
- E-learning with a formal platform
- Sessions, meetings, conferences and remote meetings
So, in some cases, the time in digital media that has increased will create a change in habits, habit and processes that will remain, but there will also be cases where it will be only temporary and will end up returning to normal. The suggestion is to focus on the 5 previous points because they are surely the ones that will have an important change.
What to do to take advantage of these trends?
To take advantage of the increase in time on social networks, you can do some immediate things:
- Review the content strategy, focus it on those most pressing problems for our audience and the solutions that we can provide.
- Post with discipline and consistency, 10, 15, 20 or 30 times a month.
- Amplify content with advertising to reach more people.
- Use video in a high percentage of the content.
- Invite contacts, clients, allies and employees to follow and share the content
- Implement a chatbotthat quickly and punctually answers the main questions of those who contact you through networks.
