STRATEGY, OPINIONS & OVERALL SUCCESS or some, 2020 was the year of quickly adapting their content “Content marketing became more essential during the pandemic. Fmarketing strategy. For others, it was the year to finally Due to a decrease in revenue, we weren’t pursuing paid advertising. develop one. With restrictions and wanting to ensure the health and safety of our team and clients, we had few in-person meetings. Content “The pandemic made us create a strategy. Getting attention got marketing helped us stay in front of people digitally.” way harder, and we had to adapt. We built an SEO strategy and a content marketing strategy on that, as well as a new website, and Companies became more empathetic are seeing improvement in our results,” one respondent said. About half of respondents (51%) agreed that over the last year it had become increasingly difficult to capture audiences’ attention. Others found their companies finally paying attention to content To combat that, many adjusted the tone of their marketing. marketing: “We increased our empathy toward our audience and found them “The pandemic forced us to start content marketing and add to be more receptive.” marketing as a focus. We were previously very sales oriented.” “We stayed in touch with customers with tips for helping their staff “The pandemic reinforced the importance of our content marketing and patients. We offered more uplifting and educational marketing, strategy. The commitment to content marketing is now company- positioned ourselves as a partner, and focused on helping rather wide and there is increased collaboration between the sales and than selling.” marketing team.” “We had to be more thoughtful about the topics we were covering, 73% OF RESPONDENTS HAVE A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY. as well as the target audiences we were approaching. Our core “Before the pandemic, my company did not have a marketing audience is healthcare professionals, so we had to cover topics they presence at all. I was brought in to revamp the look and feel of a tired, cared about rather than talking about what WE thought they cared industrial B2B company and introduce new strategies to assist in sales about (and risk appearing tone-deaf).” development. We have now completed a rebrand and are looking at expanding our marketing presence even further.” continued on next page 66