Almost 12 months to the day, the world was turned upside down.

The COVID-19 pandemic closed cities everywhere and the usual business development approaches stopped working overnight.

One year later, as we (tentatively) look towards an exit from lockdown life, should you still consider digital marketing or will the old methods become the norm again?

Speaking to our clients, we can safely say that although the ‘old ways’ will surely play a part, regular coffee meetings and conferences won’t be what keeps your pipeline full. The world has moved on.

And although Zoom fatigue may see the success of webinars lessened eventually, digital marketing is here to stay.

To help you plan for the future, we’ve put together a list of our top recommendations for how to use digital marketing after lockdown. Whether you’re building on your current strategy or just starting on your digital marketing journey.

Podcasts

Hosting your own podcast is a perfect way to reach your target clients and keep their attention for a significant length of time.

All consultancies want to be seen as thought leaders and a podcast can help you become one. They allow you to build trust and demonstrate your expertise authentically. And it’s not just listeners who can become potential clients – your guests can too.

Hosting an industry leader on your show can help you create new BD connections and strengthen existing relationships too. Trust us, we’ve seen it happen more often than not with our own and our clients’ podcasts.

Email marketing

Another channel we’ve continued to see great results from is regular weekly or monthly e-newsletters.

E-newsletters give you the opportunity to reach out to your database in an authentic way, build rapport with your clients and provide them with valuable insights that they may miss on social media.

For some of our clients this is the channel that’s giving them the best ROI right now.

Gated Content

Written content like blog articles will always have a place in your digital marketing strategy. But it can be difficult to track readers and potential leads.

To overcome that issue, you should consider ‘Gated Content’.

By drafting a larger piece of content such as a Whitepaper, Report or Framework, you can host this on your website behind a registration form.

To access this content, your prospective client will need to fill in the form and provide you with their details. This way you can track exactly who is reading your content and also create a list of potential leads to follow up with afterwards.

Create A Video Series

If you’d rather not create a long whitepaper or blog, or you’d like to repurpose some existing pillar content, why not turn it into a series of videos?

For example; if you have a 10-stage framework that you’ve created, record a short snappy video for each stage and post them on LinkedIn over a few weeks as a series.

Using video can change your content from static to dynamic in an instant, helping you to stand out from the crowd in a busy newsfeed. Not only that, but it reaches more people.  Video content on average receives 12 times more engagement than text or image posts combined.

So there you have it, four simple but highly effective ways to continue using digital marketing when we start to return to more ‘normal’ times.

We’ve seen each of these methods deliver great results for both our clients and for ourselves at Create Engage, and have no doubt this will continue to be the case beyond COVID.

If you’re thinking about life after lockdown and would like a chat about how to make use of digital marketing for your consultancy, feel free to get in touch.