The Local Business and Government Marketing Dilemma — Top Eight Strategies Emerging Into the Post-COVID era 2021

What a strange year this has been — just last week I drove my family a few hours, with 1 Teams meeting, 1 Google Hangout meeting and 2 Zoom meetings underway simultaneously in the car, between work and school. Everybody mobile and online — it worked, but not ideal in building relationships for us. The social media and communications platforms were happy about it though, perhaps at our expense.

As we learned in the Social Dilemma, a Netflix production nearly everyone in America may have found during the COVID lockdowns, our economy is most definitely an “attention economy” at this time. Online attention, to be clear — we are not yet rebounding offline. Time spent consuming digital media is the business goal of social media — to watch videos and their ads, to endlessly chat, vlog and game (seeing ads), to swipe, browse, tag, share multi-media carefully curated by humans and algorithms to maintain and influence attention, with space for advertising. You personally, online, are the product as your attention is captured, endlessly generating personal consumer behavior data.

As we’ve known but which became crystal clear this past year, social platforms online are in fact publishers — as they curate, craft, select, unselect, create, delete, promote media to target audiences, as a multi-billion dollar business model. Some “participate” more than others, supporting or suppressing content, paid or not. Yes, you may freely use the platform for your own communications purposes — but it’s not a garden walled from publisher-owner influence or governance, at all. Mobile phones and devices also are publisher tools — curating and presenting content informed by your physical activities — though this is becoming more difficult with crackdowns on mobile identification for personal privacy purposes.

What difference does this make to your business? Particularly the B2B, B2G, online B2C and nonprofit communities? (Setting aside brick-and-mortar retail for a while more).

In short, this year, your own publishing power needs attention, to your own audience for attention to you. The publishing terms, pricing and business audience access are entirely out of your control, or simply not cost-effective as for smaller and more local businesses, when using 3rd-party publishers. What’s also dangerously out of control, is the “social media liability risk” that’s emerged in this recent era of online partisan advocacy and tribal dialog — tinder that’s easily lit and can’t easily be extinguished. Particularly within the legacy, giant social and broadcast media channels including Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, YouTube (Google), most cable news. It’s even intruding into LinkedIn (Microsoft) and Pinterest — but these may survive as the more objective publishers on digital social media and data platforms. Reddit simply can’t be messed with, proceed there always with due caution and transparent business interests (but it is time to seriously give it a look if you haven’t — including ad subject alignment in groups or “subreddits”).

To get the attention of your target audience, you must produce attention-maintaining content, and put it in the hands of your attention-consuming audience. Without them feeling like a “product”, but as a member, partner, friend, contributor, or stakeholder. A true customer. Note this is a focus on “marketing”, i.e. data-driven targeting and generation of leads and sales (for products, services, specific campaigns), vs. “PR”, which is more focused on brand, image and relationship presence (for the company, lines of business) that may be needed to define and inform the overall business strategy.

This content, however, should be published as possible on your terms, within your budget, using and generating your own data, stories, experiences — separated from partisan, tribal community dialog, influence, 3rd-party control and complaint. Nobody wants a bad Yelp or Google review, negative social comments or bad Karma — there’s little recourse or accountability at all for this kind of feedback, and the impact can be dire. Good reviews, comments, likes, shares, etc. are all indeed helpful and important online buyer signals — so be proactive about getting these, rewarding your audience with your best content as they engage.

How can this be done, what is the spending plan for local/regional business and nonprofit digital marketing in the post-COVID era emerging through 2021? Following is a prioritized list of the top 8 strategies that require attention, focus and investment — this is a summary, more detail and tactics are available from the Northern Virginia digital marketing experts at KME.digital.

Note: This guidance, while focused on digital marketing and PR strategies for business — is valid also for public sector and government digital engagement with citizens and constituents. While government Agencies aren’t seeking revenue from sales, they are seeking leads and visibility to G2C digital engagement (which may be their mission), information-sharing, outreach and public discourse. Therefore, Agencies will find use from these strategies as well — organized around a “Digital Customer Engagement Strategy and Playbook” — something I’ve developed within the government that must be continually updated during these times.

1. Plan

With all our lives are throwing at us, particularly for smaller businesses, it’s always hard to slow down and plan a bit. It’s also very hard to plan marketing when it’s not your skill or expertise — and therefore some informed guidance is necessary, to balance costs vs. benefits of a mind-boggling universe of digital marketing tech, services, packages. And balance this in a way that supports your business strategy over the next year, at the same time current, daily opportunities and audience are maintained. Enough said — this article might help with some of the planning, and agencies like KME.digital can help in all the other strategic and tactical strategizing, planning and assessments, custom to your business.

2. Product

While the “information economy” relied on information-sharing, the “attention economy” relies on experience-sharing. This includes the visceral, sensory nature of products — i.e. something to feel and touch and experience, not only physical, but virtual. By this, we may include digital information — but intentionally-packaged, as an ebook, white paper, report, or other kinds of discrete publications (including video — these are critical, particularly for YouTube search, podcast, music, imagery) that can be repeatedly sold, offered, consumed online or offline. Leave-behinds, from customer sales engagements. Offerings, either as a priced product or in addition to a labor-based service. Explicit outputs from services rendered (that deliver outcomes), or in addition to services rendered, that can be cost-effectively reproduced for all customers. If you’re a home services company — can you produce a “Top 10 Guide to Home Repair Parts Assistance Directory”? Or a branded hammer/wine opener? If you already sell “products”, using eCommerce or not, offer free products for customers and prospects — perhaps information products.

3. Search

Internet search remains king of the digital marketing value portfolio. Google search, to be sure, but there’s a lot of value in targeting Bing search, as well as searches in YouTube, LinkedIn, Quora and to some degree the social media platforms (though most organic search influence is within closed-wall groups). Internet website SEO continues to be critical, despite continual evolution of “what makes good results for users” algorithm changes from Google & Bing. This means online visibility, backlinks, standard page rankings, presence in voice/mobile/video format or device searches, and Google SERP formats like carousels and snippets, knowledge graph panels, rich answers, local packs, etc. are all things to consider with SEO — with a tremendous increase in usability, mobile performance, storytelling, longer-form content, semantic relevance and balance, internal linking and visual impact as key facets of a successful SEO strategy.

With some uncertaintainty and turmoil in the paid advertising space for local businesses, as well as all business attention currently being online right now, ramp up and accelerate SEO activities at once (it does take some time to “soak in”). Have both a “static” (website) update strategy, and regular “active” publishing strategy (i.e. original articles, images, blogs, analysis — some of which can become “product”). Content ads and remarketing/retargeting in both search and ad display networks, like Google, remain affordable and a quick-turn for PR, branding and very targeted lead generation, particularly with very careful, data-driven and competitively-aggressive keyword management.

4. Events

We are all starved for in-person, non-Zoom, physical contact — social, entertainment, business, communities. B2G and B2B marketing is especially reliant on this, for networking and business development. B2C has lost whole swaths of audiences, from travel to restaurants and physical retailers — much that’s in danger of not ever returning. I believe this is a pent-up demand to explode over the next year, though with a good deal of precautionary change to cope with COVID-related fear and liability concerns. Now is the time to plan and/or ramp-up your production or association with physical events — if only to begin practicing event-engagement through webinars and online-discussions, Twitter chats, online Meetups.

What kind of events, where, should you move now to create or associate with, either for PR or marketing purposes? Industry shows or conferences? Concerts? Sporting events or community fairs? Be prepared and be there, when we all emerge, and be ready to spend or invest wisely among dramatic differences in event presence pricing and availability, as the event market returns. Be also ready with geofencing and/or geo-targeting — though growing restrictions on device-ID tracking may limit soon the usefulness of geofencing.

5. Email

While the Discord, Snapchat and texting crowd may be unclear what their email password is, or if they even still have an email address from school or their original “Call of Duty” account, email still is and is even more now the core currency of most business dialog and commercial transactions. Your business is fully in control of the audience and messaging, as well — in a medium that’s still well-trusted and controlled, by opt-in/opt-out controls, spam filters and quickly-increasing privacy regulations. Such as managed through platforms like HubSpot. This will be a year where email-based content marketing sees a resurgence, particularly as local, programmatic advertising dollars find less lead-value and shift away from the social media platforms mentioned above. Programmatic advertising is already beginning to notice some fall-off in customer re-targeting value, on those platforms, as browser vendors eliminate 3rd-party website cookie tracking.

6. Content Placement; Native Advertising

Placing banner ads on website pages your audience may see, for local businesses, is generally a mix of direct media buying campaigns — to local/regional publications — and some degree of programmatic advertising using DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms). Online consumers generally don’t like ads “pushed” to them, vs. gaining information/insight based on their own search, discovery and trusted conversations. Also, DSPs will both (A) become less useful this year for user-specific tracking and identification (due to privacy-related concerns), and (B) become more useful in targeting audience segments and profiles as additional AI/ML capabilities are introduced (i.e. matching publisher inventory with your business topics, products, subject matter). Therefore, this is a year to focus on explicit value and ROI in display ad purchasing, which includes testing/evaluating the graphics and messaging of your customized ads. Actually test them, using small purchases or trusted user groups.

This is also now the time to identify online publications, publisher groups or local ad networks (or agencies that have curated a portfolio of these kinds of relationships) that cater specifically to your audience. Then establish a relationship with the media/ad sales contacts, and work through a customized package for marketing — whether one-time, part of a campaign, or part of a recurring series. This should include any/all “native advertising” opportunities — where thought leadership, analysis, research-style content is embedded within the publication (whether website, email newsletters, videos, streaming, broadcast) as useful, engaging content — not overt advertising language. This raises many more opportunities not only for impressions and click-throughs, but also many SEO advantages in terms of backlinks and community engagement.

7. LinkedIn & Professional Networking

LinkedIn is by far the most useful professional networking, sales and BD platform to reach out and engage other professionals, employees, partners, etc. It’s a B2B/B2G environment, and has truly become the go-to for generating visibility and leads among the professional sales/BD crowd as they/we suffer through endless Zoom calls, impersonal webinars, and context-less, de-humanized electronic conversation. Many options exist for segmenting, channeling and targeting your audience, from geo-location ads to groups to employee advocacy and information-sharing tools. This won’t let up, as the transition back-to-work occurs in fits and starts, with much experimentation, reluctance, over-eagerness, caution, etc.

Marketing into professional groups is fantastic for B2B/B2G — always has been — and there are other options out there besides LinkedIn — such as Meetups, Xing, Lunchmeet and a wealth of other local business community forums, some membership-controlled, others just online. All already have, and will have more soon, a lot of information and opportunities for offline-to-online engagement transitions. What’s most important here, is topic/brand community engagement (this may require a new role in your organization, or service from your marketing agency) — i.e. you must regularly, routinely participate with useful input and feedback (just like any successful online community), in support of any paid advertising or content placement.

8. Brand Refresh

Bring up the conversation of “re-branding”, and thoughts from most local businesses go quickly to expensive design and creative production, from business cards and presentations to new websites, logos and social profiles. It’s true, a full re-brand isn’t for the faint of heart or wallet. Sometimes it’s needed. Many times, a refresh of digital presence is needed; coming out of our COVID hibernation, with a focus on ramped-up business and investment, a targeted refresh is what’s needed for most local businesses. Maybe it’s our “gift” to consumers, evangelists or partners, after the elongated pause in creativity, excitement, lifestyle change and improvement. Maybe it’s to get in front of an explosion in marketing and market share threats as the business economy returns to pre-COVID growth.

Be prepared to stand out — there’s always a very good set of updates that can be done to your website, creative content, online profiles, that are both cost-effective and quickly noticed. For some businesses, a new website is what’s needed; for others, perhaps a re-organization and re-emphasis of offerings, evergreen content, capability statements, or onsite SEO, performance and security tuning. What’s important, is to plan now to get it done.

Summary

First, watch sunsets. Second, in 2021, things will be and already are very different, from a digital marketing and business growth perspective for local businesses in Northern Virginia, and anywhere else. Online marketing strategies, tactics and spend are increasingly critical to manage, particularly as real change happens in the way businesses, customers and partners learn to interact, post-COVID (and pre-Whatever-Else-Is-Next). I’ve laid out some priorities and improvements to focus on, that seem a good match to help address these changes; even in uncertainty like this, however, it’s important to actively manage a balanced portfolio of marketing spend and initiatives, and keep up with digital marketing trends, tools and opportunities that leading Virginia digital marketing and SEO agencies such as KME.digital are continually tracking.

Contact me for more information and details regarding Agency or industry-specific strategies and tactics within each of these critical 2021 digital marketing domains.