“Clearly it is a tipping point in employment.”
“For e-commerce, the pandemic has been a fortuitous event…”
“We’ve had to evolve our communications, both with our internal teams and our clients, rapidly.”
Covid has changed the way we reach customers and brought new norms to digital marketing. With this in mind, we wanted to know how businesses are coping with the change. From work from home to AI we asked experts in the marketing field to weigh in on how covid has transformed the future of digital marketing technology.
James Svoboda – CEO & Partner at WebRanking, Founder at MnSearch
With Covid having dramatically shaken up the “traditional” office, we’ve seen marketing technology take a leap this year in need and fulfillment of remote communication and fulfillment of Digital Marketing initiatives.
We’ve had to evolve our communications, both with our internal teams and our clients, rapidly. Since in-person meetings have been suspended, Video communication technology became our main cornerstone for keeping connected. This covers everything from your standard Zoom or Teams video technology to headphones and mics that provide clear audio. We even have to consider stronger internet connections so that meeting will proceed uninterrupted.
Covid has also impacted Training and Continuing Marketing Education for Marketing professionals. We used to send our teams to Conferences and other off-site training sessions. All of these events have been canceled since the Pandemic hit. Instead, the industry has had to shift to relying on webinars, online courses, and full-day online conferences.
Moving Events to a digital medium even impacted MnSearch (https://mnsearch.org/), the non-profit Search Marketing Association I co-founded here in Minnesota. Our annual Search Summit (https://mnsearch.org/summit/) was postponed from June 2020 to 2021. Monthly events have shifted to a webinar format. And the annual Holiday event went virtual for 2020. While the shift to a digital format was abrupt, it was the technology that enabled it to happen.
Website: https://www.webranking.com/
Twitter: @Realicity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realicity/
Kaspar Szymanski – Founder of SearchBrothers
The current COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented challenge in modern times. The hardship it caused is difficult to quantify. While ongoing lockdowns have a profound impact on customer behavior the pandemic’s effect on the online marketing industry has been that it created a market disruption. And at the same time, incredible growth opportunities for online sales extend far beyond the duration of the pandemic. For e-commerce, the pandemic has been a fortuitous event in one of two ways. Either websites’ organic growth and sales went through the roof, in which case the past twelve months have been a very successful sales period. This was and still is the case for online education, gambling platforms, video streaming, and basically any other service that helps users to cope with the strains of the current situation.
The opposite happens of course to the business’ which would or could not be used, such as almost every aspect of the tourism industry. Travel websites are experiencing the worst lull time since 2001. Those publishers who manage to remain in the business despite this situation are about to be rewarded with an equally spectacular turnaround when users’ bottle-up need to travel can be safely satisfied again. The year 2022 will be a record-breaking year for the travel industry. Now is the time to act and to prepare for this sales explosion. Not merely the travel industry but any website operator currently suffering under the effects of COVID-19 is well advised to clean house, drop all legacy ballast including technologies that hold the site back in Google Search, review their backlink profiles and make their websites are as fast as possible. The competition for users will be more fierce than before when the pandemic is finally over and faster websites will stand a better chance to come out on top. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for publishers to focus entirely on SEO audits and improvement implementation as an investment in their imminent business future.
Website : https://www.searchbrothers.com/
Twitter: @kas_tweets
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasparszymanski/
Fili Wiese – SEO Expert
The COVID-19 pandemic has jolted the entire online marketing industry and confronted most publishers with one of two distinctly opposite situations. Some verticals, such as tourism, events, and recreational sports have experienced a tremendous, and for the most part, persistent drop in converting traffic. Other verticals among others remote conferencing services, online education, and retail trade experienced their organic rankings reach new, stratospheric highs. This situation is bound to continue for the foreseeable time and will only revert to its previous normal levels when the pandemic has been brought under control globally. Hence, COVID-19 has altered the course of the industry for a while. Its impact won’t last but the present situation poses a tremendous opportunity for both the winners and losers among website publishers.
Websites which have lost out must not waste time to use the lull time to improve their SEO signals and take on substantial challenges as an investment in the future. One important focus area for many websites is likely to be page performance. The best way to go about this is to conduct a technical SEO audit by an external agency with the goal to uncover all untapped growth potentials. The goal of these publishers must be to be on to top of the game when all bottled-up consumption needs can be satisfied again. They can look forward to an incredible growth period by early 2022. Keep in mind that site operators are mainly responsible for the SEO signals which go into Google search algorithms and impact the rankings. Now is the time to optimize.
Site operators currently enjoying unprecedented growth should use the time to collect as much relevant data as possible, especially collecting and preserving all of their raw web server logs. Doing so will provide them with a treasure trove of information to tap into and use to improve services over time. Their services organic search visibility is likely to plateau by 2022, possibly decline. At that point, with all the data collected over past months, they will be in an excellent position to substantially improve their SEO signals and thereby increase their market share.
The pandemic’s primary impact on the online marketing industry has been that it created a market disruption, along with growth opportunities for publishers who choose to act boldly and seize that opportunity.
Website: https://seo.services/
Twitter: @filiwiese
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/filiwiese
Bruce Clay – SEO Expert
Clearly, it is a tipping point in employment and with that, the team has evolved. Many did not think it would last but with the past year, a slower emersion into remote work has become normal. And with it, the tech software industry has pivoted to match. Clearly, Zoom and others have made it tolerable to a point of a new normal, although I long for the days when I could actually be with the team. I am now fully remote with my company and plan to stay that way. Truly COVID has changed daily life, sometimes better and sometimes worse. My only fear is that it is forever.
Website: https://www.bruceclay.com
Twitter: @BruceClayInc
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-clay/
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