Win Win Trends in MarCom for 2021 & Beyond Win Win Trends in MarCom for 2021 & Beyond
Katya Nyangi

Katya Nyangi

18 Mar 2021

share 0

If there is one thing the Covid pandemic has reinforced, it is the need to collaborate and support each other. Pre-Covid strategies that had a larger focus on outwitting competitors are now being balanced with focus on organisations that can complement your objectives to achieve mutual aims - together. Competitors have also found unique ways to speak to each other and therefore have created a larger knowledge pool to source collective solutions for the challenges within their respective industry.

This has led to leaning on win-win humanistic trends in MarCom and PR that have seen organisations stay afloat and add more value to their brands and society. For indeed, necessity is the mother of invention.

Among these emerging trends that are taking the forefront are:

1. Partnerships

The beauty of partnerships during the pandemic period is that they have brought organisations closer to their ethos, core values and principles. While we all knew them by heart, we found ourselves going back to them as the backbone of what the organisational strategies would fall on.

The synergy that comes out of these partnerships has turned out to be quite handy in propelling innovation in how organisations are responding to the business dilemmas brought about by the pandemic. As holders of mutual ethos you are able to come out stronger in meeting the needs of your customers as well as building on your shared audiences to maximise on your SOV (Share Of Voice).

Another key feature in partnerships is being able to Call To Action, as witnessed with the signing of the petition in the hospitality industry in Kenya, August 2020.

2. Being Resourceful

Consumer behaviour during the pandemic has been extensively discussed. Your audiences are much keener on the soft value they get from associating with your brand. This means value adding activities that lead to new knowledge, awareness and nurturing the values that your audience already holds - the ‘what makes me want to associate with this brand beyond the product’ - is important. Being resourceful adds to a positive brand reputation and lack of it may lead to being slowly but surely side-lined by your audience.

In the MarCom and PR context, this encompasses tool kits, thought leadership, information sessions (that unpack common concerns and challenges) and so on.

3. Building on Engagement

Engagement in the digital space is both exciting and challenging. Your audience is exposed to over 5000 promotional materials daily. On average, a potential customer would have interacted with your brand on 5 to 20 different touch points and engaged at least 7 times (the rule of 7) with your promotional content before making a decision on a purchase.

Your forms of engagement should create opportunities for relevant conversations to take place. Once again, not everyone is your audience and it is wise to structure the engagement toward the needs and interests of your audience.

Engagement has been key in bringing a feeling of cohesion and hope during these challenging times. A good example being Safaricom’s 20th anniversary Twende Tukiuke campaign that called on Kenyans to go beyond what is thought possible.

Linked to engagement is influencer marketing. Growing your engagement through champions that are able to reach your target audiences has shown the effectiveness of influencer marketing when strategically targeted. Platforms such as Wowzi, that Makini Schools will be working with this year, have added value to engagement by creating opportunities for young people with a digital reach to earn out of it - taking us back to partnerships.

4. Ability to Measure

‘In God we trust, all others must bring data.’ All strategies and campaigns should be measurable. Data is the oil of our times. We have to ensure that our KPIs are set from the very start and that they guide what we measure and how we measure our outcomes. This can be done by measuring your SOV in the industry, brand sentiment, tracking direct engagement on your social platforms, the reach of campaign hashtags and measuring lead generation - all depending on the KPI of any of the trends applied and what you set out to achieve: engagement, awareness or lead generation.

Good luck!

share 0

Katya Nyangi
Written by

Katya Nyangi

I am a people's person with experience in the fields of strategic and crisis communication, marketing, customer care, writing (human interest stories) and management in education. In my free time, I visit the communities around me and blog on True Stories of Everyday People Navigating Life.

Join #TheMovement Now

Empower helps millions of job seekers and employers find the right fit every day. Start hiring now on Africa’s #1 job site.*

Become a Mover

What People Say About Us