There’s no doubt that Covid-19 somehow affected all businesses regardless of size or industry. Almost all industries worldwide had to restructure their work model, budget, and other aspects to keep their business running. Besides, the digital marketing industry being a total B2B industry, also faced a major impact of Covid-19.
However, its diversified client market helped to balance the impact. According to a study, it is estimated that there will be a CAGR of 9% in digital marketing calculated from 2020 to 2026.
In this article, we will discuss the impact that COVID-19 has on digital marketing.
What was the positive impact of Covid-19 on Digital Marketing?
Since digital marketing is an industry that caters to almost every other industry, it didn’t face a complete halt in its operations. Moreover, there were some beneficial impacts of Covid-19 on this industry which are as follows:
- Increased Consumption of Digital Content
Even though digital marketing has been present in the marketing industry for a long time, businesses give it less priority than other marketing tactics. However, during the pandemic, people could not move out of their houses, increasing their reliance on digital content.
Social media consumption and online shopping both increased significantly, due to which companies had to make two major changes. The first was to make their products available on eCommerce platforms, and the second was to increase their marketing budget towards digital marketing. Eventually, this accelerated the growth of the digital marketing industry.
- Companies Shift To Social Media
Zomato is the best example of how the social media presence of a company can make it more reliable and relevant. After seeing the effect of the strong social media presence of startups like Zomato and others, established companies have also started to rely on social media marketing (SMM) as an effective tactic.
Being on social media allows companies to engage with their customers in a more witty manner. It also makes the brand more reliable as people find it easy to reach out to the company through social media. And if you are thinking about how it’s impacting the digital marketing industry, then you should know that digital marketing firms also manage the social media pages of these companies.
Moreover, considering the increase in the consumption of memes, there are a lot of digital marketing companies which have started providing meme marketing.
- eCommerce’s Success
The eCommerce industry, considered not a good fit for the Indian market, has proved everybody wrong. eCommerce sales are expected to be 24% of total retail sales world wide by 2026. And since the eCommerce Industry is one of the biggest consumers of digital marketing, its growth has made a positive impact on the digital marketing industry as well.
How has Covid-19 Impacted Digital Marketing Negatively?
You may think that the overall impact of Covid-19 on digital marketing was good. But we still haven’t talked about the negative impacts.
As you learned above that this industry heavily relies on other industries, so there were also some backlashes on the industry itself. Here are the two major problems that the digital marketing industry had to face during the pandemic.
- The Compromised Budget
Apart from some industries like Pharma and eCommerce, most industries showed decreased sales. Now, when some industries could spend more on their marketing, others were finding it a challenge to market their products. Due to this, the digital marketing industry had to revise the services’ cost. Companies’ low budgets for marketing forced the industry to lower the rate and provide marketing services at compromised rates.
- Increase In Competition
In addition to the compromised budget, the digital marketing industry saw increased competition. Many digital marketing companies emerged during the lockdown period. Moreover, these companies were able to provide better deals to their clients due to two reasons.
First, these companies employed those people who lost their jobs due to Covid. The pre-Covid marketing agencies had to lower their workforce to keep running the business. Due to this, they laid off their employees.
The second reason is related to the online work culture. Maintaining a whole new online company was easier than shifting an offline company to an online one.
What is The Pandemic’s Lesson To Digital Marketing?
The pandemic has made companies realise that digital marketing is not to experiment. If a particular type of marketing is deriving results for the company, it is better to stick to it. Besides, it will undoubtedly be a lot better than entering any other form of marketing. Digital marketing needs establishment, and it takes time to do so. Ultimately, it is better to do what you are good at.
What Has Not Changed Even After The Pandemic?
A big debate related to digital marketing was about its marketing practices. SEO, interlinking, and outbound linking are still necessary for digital marketing. And a common thing between these components is that AI is still not able to do it better than humans.
The content generated by AI is still not good in terms of readability. There is still a lack of correctness in SEO research derived from AI. AI is learning but has not learned as much as needed for this industry. According to a report by Aherfs, less than 1% of the top 10 results on Google’s front page are less than a year old and others are leading the page for more than a year. And it indicates that SEO and other traditional components of digital marketing are still relevant to the industry.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Covid-19 pandemic has positively and negatively impacted the digital marketing industry. The increased consumption of digital content and the success of the eCommerce industry have provided opportunities for the industry to grow.
However, the low budget and increased competition have posed challenges to the industry. Traditional components such as SEO, interlinking, and outbound linking are still necessary and relevant to the industry. As we move forward, it is crucial for the digital marketing industry to adapt and evolve in response to the changing environment and consumer behaviour.
