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Cases of confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) are increasing around the globe. Entire cities and states have essentially shut down. Your business needs to scramble to navigate the pandemic – with both internal and external customers.

Major firms like IBM’s Think, Adobe Summit, and SXSW canceled their big-tech conferences due to coronavirus concerns. We are in uncharted territory. Still, your business must remain agile to switch gears on a moment’s notice. You will need to identify alternative channels to event marketing to keep the pipeline as full as possible even while practicing social distancing.

The Marketing Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The typical marketing budget allocates about 30-40% for travel expenses, trade show sponsorship, attendance, and collateral. The COVID-19 pandemic is blowing apart the trade show budgets quickly. That’s a blow, but that also means you have some additional funds to devote to alternative marketing.

With cities and states prohibiting large groups from meeting, marketers are relying upon content marketing delivered directly to subscribers online to stay engaged with their customers. Content marketing has evolved far beyond editorial strategies and blog posts. It’s a comprehensive approach that leverages an array of digital marketing strategies such as email, social media, SEO, and paid media to continue engagement with customers.

If your business has canceled upcoming events, you need to temporarily revamp your digital content marketing efforts to ensure consistent and timely communication with your customers.

IBM’s Think provides an excellent example. The company canceled its San Francisco event. However, they have re-engineered it to be a new digital conference in May. IBM is relying on interactive content to maintain the event’s values and missions without the risk of travel.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a form of digital marketing in which you develop an on-going relationship with customers through content that is non-promotional and provides value at every touch. Unlike advertising, content marketing is not overtly promotional. Rather, content marketing allows brands to become storytellers and provide important information especially during times of crisis. Your customers and prospects seek out content that entertains, inspires, educates, and informs. Content marketing tactics will help keep you create an on-going relationship during, and even after, the coronavirus pandemic.

The Importance of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a highly effective way for you to stay in contact with your customers and increase pipeline generation during the coronavirus pandemic. With the ever-changing digital landscape, communicating and engaging with your audience can remain undisrupted, no matter what the situation is – as long as you have the proper content marketing strategies in place.

As we see more event closures, brands should follow IBM’s innovative lead and adapt their previous plans to become digital events. In doing so, brands will have the opportunity to globally scale their events and increase engagement – further proving the importance of content marketing. Digital events will allow you to become storytellers en masse and provide consumers with the content of value increasing brand awareness and engagement. Customers and prospects seek out content that entertains, inspires, educates, and informs – a strong content strategy will give you the opportunity to leverage important elements from experiential marketing online.

Since trade shows are primarily used for demand generation initiatives and pipeline acceleration, focusing on digital lead generation channels becomes vital. Many marketers would say that increasing digital spending will increase lead volume, but quality can vary. Some would argue that the quality of leads generated at trade shows can also vary – as long as the leads are carefully vetted, pipeline generation will increase without having to rely on trade show participation.

In challenging times and a fast-changing global landscape, communicating brand identity and values remains important. Coronavirus provides a new challenge for marketers that shines a light on the importance of relying on strategies outside of conventional channels (while expected to remain agile). The goal of experiential marketing during the coronavirus outbreak is to invest in similar experiential and content marketing strategies delivered through online platforms. Ensure your customers are aware that you are still available and interested in their business throughout 2020.