Long Term Effect of Covid-19 on Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing in Nepal was already gaining momentum over the years. What the pandemic has done acts as a catalyst to boost the importance of digital marketing to the Nepalese market and made it even more widespread.
In recent years, many businesses in Nepal have gone digital to reach their potential customers by increasing their brand visibility online. Social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn have humongous number of Nepali users where Nepali brands can maintain and showcase their presence. Not only do large businesses from Kathmandu rely on digital marketing to run their business, but it works amazingly for small to medium scale businesses outside valley as well.
The pandemic may have brought huge loss to Nepali businesses, but it has also drastically changed the digital marketing landscape in our country as well as globally. The question arises, was it a natural adoption, or were we forced to take the significant pace digitally because of the pandemic?
The Breakout and Early Days of COVID-19 in Nepal
At the end of March 2020, people had to adjust to a new normal; Nepali residents and businesses started adopting measures such as work from home and social distancing resulting in the boom of social media use. In addition to it, drastic emergence of COVID-19 infections in neighboring countries led WHO to state Nepal as a potential high-risk zone, driving people to live with fear.
- ✔ Limited medical treatments available in the country made people stay at home.
- ✔ People began to look for digital alternatives to limit physical interactions.
- ✔ Work, education, entertainment, everything besides essentials, began to be done remotely.
- ✔ Traditional brick and mortar stores started to shift towards online platforms to do business.
Rise of E-commerce Platforms in Nepal
While existing e-commerce platforms like Daraz and SastoDeal began to cement their stance, there was also a surge of new e-commerce sites like Gyapu. So much so that, at one point, there was a meme circulating that read, “One household, one e-commerce”.
What started out as two weeks of lockdown in Nepal soon extended to months of quarantine. Taking advantage of this situation, more and more businesses went online to increase their sales and public relations.
- ✔ First, it was just groceries, medicines, and other essentials.
- ✔ Then, work-from-home and study materials began to be available online.
- ✔ Soon, clothes, footwear, entertainment gadgets were sold from online portals
- ✔ Even religious services started being delivered online.
Change in Nepalese Customer Behavior
Purchasing things online wasn’t so popular amongst Nepalese. Even young people that spend so much time online did not always order things online. However, lockdown and the fear of being infected by the virus led people to consider this option.
Those who had never used online shopping became introduced to it. Once people realized how easy it was and the kind of options available to them to choose from, they became hooked. Just a push of a few buttons and products were being delivered to their doorsteps.
4 Challenges Businesses faced after Covid-19
While the consumers were benefiting from arrays of suppliers to choose from, the business owners were facing huge competition in the market. The challenge ahead for them included:
- ✔ How do they present themselves as being better than their competitors?
- ✔ How do they persuade customers to buy from them and not from someone else?
- ✔ How to stand out among competitors?
- ✔ How to establish presence in a highly competitive market?
To solve such issues related to establishing online presence in Nepali market, this is where the power of digital marketing comes into play. If businesses want a larger share of the market in this digital age, they have to make sure that their digital marketing strategies are on point and reaches the right audience at right time.
Shift in Business Strategy of Nepalese Industry to cope with the pandemic
While most businesses struggled to cope with the imposed lockdown, some acted quickly to update their marketing strategies to remain in business.
- ✔ Popular online food ordering portal, Foodmandu, which in normal times delivered cooked meals from restaurants across the country began to deliver groceries as that was the need of the hour.
- ✔ With travel restrictions in place, ride-sharing company Pathao focused its marketing on Pathao Food instead.
- ✔ Physical stores such as pet shops, clothing stores, art galleries, electronic stores are just few other examples of traditional businesses that adapted going online to survive in the post pandemic Nepal.
Companies that didn’t have such alternatives like Travels and Tours remained to stay active in social media by conducting different types of games like quizzes and photo contests. This helped them maintain their digital presence amid the pandemic so that once everything is normal, their brand presence will still be secured.
Need for Digital Marketing for Nepali businesses
Business owners are used to compromising things and are ready to face any challenges that come their way. However, the COVID-19 effect was something that brought about unprecedented challenges.
Over the last 7-8 months, the business had to go through many difficulties, some of them shutting down forever, leaving them in huge debt. Online platforms provided a ray of hope during these dark times. It made them realize how amazingly it can work not only to potentially thrive but to grow their business to reach their preferred goal.
With COVID-19, people have realized how important it is for any business to have a digital presence. With unique and creative digital marketing tactics, it becomes easier to grab the attention of more people. It also showed that if the products are marketed well to the target audience using the digital platform, it can be used not just to sustain the business but also to exceed what was possible with the traditional way of doing business.
Top 4 reasons go digital in Nepal:
If you are still not sure about how important digital marketing is or hesitant about its use, here are some reason that will clarify why online marketing is and will be the best choice to grow your business:
- Thriving digital economy:
There is no doubt the digital economy has grown largely since the invention of the Internet and e-commerce. But everyone will agree that the effect of COVID-19 has led the digital business to a different level.
With a sudden switch in buying habits of Nepalese from visiting stores to moving online, because of retail stores being shut down. All you have to do is put an effort to go online and create great digital marketing strategies with impressive websites to persuade people to buy your products.
If you have problem transiting to the digital age, we at Sharda IT Service can help you to achieve your digital goals.
- Social media platforms for entertainment and business purposes:
Almost every age group in Nepal is using social media platforms daily leaving no choice for businesses but to go online to reach the target population which are actively online. You can promote your business services, product launches and events with ease using various digital marketing platforms.
Most of the people use platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and others to connect and take pleasure, and did you know you can leverage social media sites to advertise your products and services while they are being entertained on such platforms? Furthermore, certain groups of people are already there to sign up to see reviews, check out new products, and analyze how different brands treat their customers.
This is why more than ever your business needs to stay active on at least one platform to engage with social media users.
- Wider audience online:
Traditional marketing has its limitation and you can only reach people locally. But with digital marketing, you can reach people to a greater distance and expose your business even internationally; you can even get a change to procure your products with global clients if you connect with the right peoples. To add cherry on top of it, more people are going online than before leading to greater reach of people through digital platforms.
With a wider audience staying online, it becomes easier and affordable to reach the target population with digital marketing.
- Events and networking being held online:
A sudden outbreak of pandemic caused many important events of the year to be postponed, canceled, or be conducted virtually.
Being unable to communicate in-person might be hectic in certain situations but networking and connecting with people online for events can be as productive as dealing in person. If you haven’t noticed many businesses are networking and even promoting events using different digital marketing platforms, zoom classes/meetings, Facebook Lives, and so on.
Change in mediums of Marketing post pandemic
With social distancing imposed, the traditional way of door-to-door marketing was restricted. The most common type of marketing via TV or Newspaper ads is also not seen as profitable as most people get information from the online medium.
Email and social media marketing have been common for some time now, and the pandemic has made its importance even more evident. You might have noticed sponsored ads on your Facebook or Instagram feed. YouTube vloggers and TikTok accounts reviewing/promoting different products and services. These are paid ads that help businesses reach a wider audience.
If paid advertisements are not what you look for, social media can also be used to promote your business free of cost. Facebook also launched Marketplace to support local businesses during these difficult times. The reach for free promotions though might not be as wide as the paid ones unless what you offer is too appealing or eye-catching for the audience.
3 Lessons learnt from the pandemic
Businesses are already beginning to get back to the “old normal”. Physical stores have once again started to be open and the number of people visiting them is increasing steadily. At some point, COVID-19 will be a distant memory. Yet, it will have left us with invaluable lessons.
- ✔ Online Presence is an absolute must:
Businesses will now have to seriously consider an online presence. At this point, it is not simply an alternative, but a need.
The experience of visiting a physical store or talking to someone in person cannot be denied. But, the reach that online presence gives your business can also not be ignored. Besides, it is also necessary to prepare for any unexpected future circumstances that might shut down physical outlets again.
- ✔ Demand for Digital Marketing jobs:
Businesses will now have to seriously consider an online presence. At this point, it is not simply an alternative, but a need.
From social media posts to video content creation, the demand is high. New types of vacancies are being announced like, “Need a TikTok account with more than 100K followers for product promotion”.
- ✔ Need for technical savviness:
Everyone had to pivot from their normal routine to adjust to the changes brought by the pandemic. Technology greatly helped ease the process and even the people who were previously not used to these tools were thrust into it. In the days to come, businesses need to adapt and use technology for their benefit.
Businesses need to be knowledgeable about the digital marketing domain. This is why the aforementioned point of digital marketing jobs is also on the rise. They have to be comfortable with what SEO is and how to optimize it for better search ranking. Analytics can help businesses find out which group of people are using their services the most. They can then target that section of the market to make their business even more profitable.
The era of digital marketing was already here, but now it is more important than it ever was. If you don’t want to miss out on reaping its benefits, then you should seriously consider incorporating it into your business.
