Businesses’ attention to the online environment has grown exponentially in a short time, once the other channels of communication with customers were closed or suspended during the pandemic.

This has led to many predictions that online will become the main channel of communication with customers even after this crisis. Which may be true, but only for some businesses. Let’s not forget that many of the products or services we buy involve direct interaction with the sales person or the product itself.

I expect entrepreneurs to stop putting their online presence on the 3rd-4th place and to understand that this is where their customers spend a lot of time, thus needing at least a presentation website and a minimal presence on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram).

For those who offer services or products related to the presence of a business online, the post-crisis period could bring a higher demand. However, we must not forget that the ways of doing business will change, thus determining a process of readaptation and online marketing

If in recent years almost any campaign or any marketing action carried out online generated results, with a smaller or greater impact on the business, after this crisis we will see that entrepreneurs will look for performance and concrete results.

Let me tell you how I see things and what changes I expect to appear in this area:

1. To become a marketer, a laptop and a diploma will no longer be enough

The level of entry into this field is very low, with a laptop and a free course done on the net being able to declare yourself a marketing and online communication specialist. You put another diploma on the table and you can start working. But is it that simple?

Let’s not forget that online marketing is just a transposition of the traditional one into a virtual environment. The basic principles are the same, also referring to covering a need for a clearly defined target market through a product or service offered by a business.

As a marketer, even if you don’t understand the business, the chance of achieving a promotion and communication relevant to it is reduced. As long as you don’t understand the need of the business, you don’t understand its product or target market, all you will do is a waste of resources, time and money.

Offering marketing services that are not based on a clearly defined need and well-defined business objectives negatively affects the relevance of this field. We are in a market that will continue to grow and there is room for everyone, but let’s not forget the purpose for which online marketing services are offered to our customers.

Thus, I expect that those who do dozens of online marketers will be forced to specialize or be pulled to the right.

2. Specialization will become essential

Having experience in the field, I have often faced the mentality “we do everything for everyone, just for customers to come”.

I periodically receive resumes from people who are looking for marketer jobs. In their experience, they write that they know how to do SEO, they also do social media, they have done a Google Ads campaign, they have worked on websites made on WordPress, but they are passionate about Photoshop or photography. And if you look at the past, they worked as bartenders, having been in the field of work for 2-3 years. I’m not saying this with the intention of upsetting someone, nor do I rule out the fact that they can gradually specialize in the field, but I don’t think we should hide the truth either.

The complexity of each branch of digital marketing has grown so much that it’s impossible to know them all. When we started in 2005, the SEO and PPC domains were much simplified compared to what a relevant PPC campaign on Google means today.

Specialization means, first of all, knowing a part of a field of activity perfectly. The longer you stay in the generalist area, the more any crisis or economic decline that will come will seriously affect you.

Thus, my advice is: specialize if you have the chance to spend more time at home during this period. There are countless resources at the moment in the market, starting from courses taken by experienced people, to communities that share information or specialized books.

3. Performance will be achieved as a team

I have always considered that a team is much stronger than a lonely individual. In this field, it seems to me that we are so dispersed or segmented into small groups that we fail to form a power and show the relevance of the profession. Everyone does it individually as they know how and how they can.

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in an event organized by IAA, during which an initiative was presented to form a branch in Cluj with senior marketing specialists, which will later be extended to other cities. It is one of the few ideas I have heard of to unite this community, at the national level.

I believe that if everyone would find their specialization and the area where they offer the most value to the customer and would group themselves into teams, we could give another relevance to this field and face the multinationals that are on the market.

I expect that after this crisis people will become more eager to organize themselves in communities.

4. The customer’s profile will be changed

After this crisis, customers will become more experienced (or at least more skeptical) and will no longer do business out of inertia.

Entrepreneurs, managers or other people in the management should no longer come to ask a salesperson to sell as much as possible in the absence of a clear plan or to demand from marketing to set his communication objectives correctly, without having clear benchmarks related to what he offers, to whom he offers, what he aims for and how he does it.

It is our duty, as people in the field or marketing, to ask them for these things or to help them set them up before any campaign. And for those who do not understand or who do not prioritize these things, we should refuse to offer them services, because they will not understand the value generated and will not put into practice what we offer them as solutions.

5. Online marketing will be focused on performance and automation

Online marketing will change, and it will no longer only refer to engagement, likes, comments, website traffic or conversions. We will talk about performance marketing and automation marketing. They are based on concrete results: new customers attracted, qualified requests for quotations, closed sales and other actions to increase sales. Online marketing will be part of a sales funnel (if it hasn’t been integrated before), which will be interconnected with process automation systems such as CRMs, ERPs, RPAs, and others.

All these concrete results start from the initial setting of the business goal, the measurable objectives and the action plan developed together with the client. Clearly defining the target market and the needs that the product or service covers will become a must for any marketer who wants to survive in this market.

6. The importance of defining a clear sales funnel will increase considerably

For many entrepreneurs, but also marketers, the term sales funnel sounds good and is used in various contexts, but I have often had the opportunity to see that it is not clearly understood or clearly defined.

As long as you don’t know the sales stages that the end customer goes through, both online and offline, you can’t perform and you can’t measure which of the actions you took gave results.

When the market grows, results appear, and so you have the impression that it doesn’t matter where they come from, as long as they exist, right?

The sales funnel will become a must-have for marketers who want to deliver performance.

7. Creativity will be judged on the basis of the results obtained through it

Many times I had the opportunity to talk to people who are looking for a job and want to work as a marketer in our agency, who told me that the greatest asset they have is that they are creative.

My answer was similar in all cases: “Great! This is what our customers are looking for! What does this creativity mean to you? What impact will your creativity generate for customers?” . And from here the discussion got lost in utopian directions.

Yes, creativity is very important! It will make a difference in the future. This is what the customer is looking for in the end, but what many marketers miss is the fact that it is measured by the customer through tangible results obtained in his business.

8. Pay-per-result

One of the changes that I expect to come to the Romanian market after this crisis is the emphasis on payment on the result obtained by an online marketing campaign. This will also have a significant impact on how a marketer or a person in the field will earn money on the work done.

The salary is no longer the most important source of income, a sure income that comes at the end of the month. It seems fair and normal to me to be paid on deliverables and on the results obtained by a client, even on a certain percentage of these results. That’s why it’s important to measure what we do and specialize.

There would be a lot more to say, but I am convinced that each of us already sees them or already knows them too well.

What is certain is the fact that during this period we stay at home, so it is a good time to specialize. The market will always need specialists.

Read also “What does this crisis bring for us and our businesses?”