Consumer Engagement for the Post-Pandemic Market

Even in the midst of economic down-cycles, whether they’re part of the natural business cycle or if they’re caused by something like a global health pandemic, business success leaves clues. For the most part the general, common action taken by fellow market players such as your counterparts and competitors outlines what needs to be done to stay competitive.

Moreover, to be successful in the current world, especially with remote working, the focus, alignment, and accountability of agreed goals are paramount. You may wonder why the topic of planning, maps, and directions is important in an era of hypercompetitiveness, environmental challenges, shifting political landscapes, and ever-changing technologies. We’re in unfamiliar territory, aren’t we? When conditions such as these exist, it will be important to have tight control over planning and execution to both survive and thrive. It is during times like these that your entire organization needs to pull together, be committed to a strategy and method, and move in the same direction. That is why several entrepreneurs often look forward to Hoshin Kanri. It is the method that organizations use to formulate and then implement long-term strategies. Hoshin Kanri enables organizations to build, deploy and accomplish their strategic goals. Furthermore, the Hoshin Kanri x matrix is known to be a powerful visual tool Hoshin Kanri uses for managing detailed strategic planning. It is very similar to other strategic planning methods, such as the Balanced Scorecard, OKRs, and OGSM. However, the X-Matrix is different from the others in several key ways that make it stand out when it comes to establishing accountability, alignment, and focus.

Anyway, let us talk about the consumer market. While there’s no doubt about the fact that the consumer market will look and function differently to how it’s been over the past few decades, preparation for that post-pandemic economic environment has to commence now! Everyone can agree on the fact that there has been plenty of disruption to the global market thanks to the pandemic, leading to significant business loss and in some extreme cases, shutdown.

Nevertheless, this has led to people coming together, and instances of businesses receiving financial assistance from various organizations which has allowed them to survive in this environment. This can also be seen with the government and the pandemic, and the way things have been tackled that has led to a major transformation in the way companies do business across the world. It’s all about maintaining contact with consumers that might currently not be in the position to keep patronising your business, brand, organisation, etc, the way they’ve been doing it all along, or the way they want to. It’ll soon be business as usual… Or will it?

A future-proof business strategy

At the core of any customer engagement in preparation for a post-pandemic market should be a consideration of the core business your brand, company, or organization is involved in. It’s a simple matter of making sure there’s an offering to speak of in honor of the basic principles of business and economics. Marketing solutions like this can be used to help connect with customers during this time so that customers are able to be engaged at all levels and they are aware of what roads your business is taking as we all come out of a pandemic.

Your target market needs to be able to pay you for a product supplied or service rendered, and it’s as simple as that! In practice that might mean having to scale things down a bit, if only for the moment, but if done right the need to do so can be made to work in your favor, otherwise it can go totally in the opposite direction.

Lockdowns and all manner of other measures taken to combat the pandemic will naturally limit many things, one of which could be your ability to deliver on your enterprising offering with the speed and quality you’d like your market to associate with your brand. Within reason, you should give the impression that you’re part of the struggle along with your customers, as opposed to coming across as scaling back on the quality of your products or services purely as means through which to protect your profits.

For instance, if you’re in that line of business, your customers might have to wait a bit longer to receive any goods they might have bought from you. Make it clear that you’re fighting the battle against the circumstances with them and that eventually, against all the odds stacked against the both of you, you will deliver on your value proposition!

At ground-level, there are some identified, physical measures every business will be required to put in place to prepare for the post-pandemic resumption of business, the implementation of which can make for some consumer-engagement gold as you communicate with your consumer-market. As part of this communication, some clever marketing and advertising opportunities should be made full use of, all of which comes together to make for a future-proof business strategy.

The “new normal” which has often been referenced will require of any enterprising entity to be able to adapt to a business world that’s set to dynamically change at a faster pace.