Are you ready for ‘Post Lockdown Recovery’? It’s clear the world has changed quite dramatically from only a few months ago and as such, this will lead to a shift in consumer behaviours whether it’s the way they travel, purchase a product or even socialise with family and friends.

As lockdown eases and we start to move into the recovery period of Covid-19, now is the time for brands to re-look at their marketing strategy and to plan ahead for when consumer spending returns. So we’ve put together some top tips for travel and lifestyle brands to cost-effectively and easily tailor their marketing activity to the current climate, which may help brands to stay one step ahead of their competitors and maintain a relationship with their target audience.

• Re-look at your target markets: Understanding your target audiences is one of the key elements of any marketing strategy. Re-look at who it is you are now targeting and how you want to reach those customers, then revise your marketing strategy to align with these changes and ensure your content is relevant.
• Create a content plan: The best way to reach target audiences is through engaging content, so pull together a plan of six or 12 months of ideas ensuring they are relevant post Covid-19. For example, this could include a mixture of topical, news stories or evergreen ideas which can be used anytime of the year and cover a range of channels such as blogs, podcasts or press releases.
• Focus on relevant media and digital platforms: Ensure the content plan covers topics suitable for different media and digital platforms, which will reach the target audience you’re hoping to engage with. Each publication, whether it be long lead or short lead, print or digital, will have a preference for a particular style of content so target publications relevant to your target audiences.
• Get digital savvy: With social media platforms reporting a high increase in visitors, having a strong and established digital presence is more important than ever. Creative and high-quality video content is a great way to make your brand stand out from the crowd so use this time to create videos or animated graphics to support campaigns included in the content plan. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram also offer cost-effective ways to advertise video posts targeted to specific groups and ages, further enhancing the reach.
• Stay connected with your customers or clients: Ensure your marketing activity helps to build and maintain a relationship with your customer or client by providing content that adds value and shows your customer you are still here. This could be through virtual events, running webinars on topics relevant to your brand or providing customers with virtual tours of a venue or hotel.

Despite these uncertain times, maintaining marketing momentum is vital to keeping your brand front of mind. Now is an opportune time to prepare a post-lockdown marketing strategy to connect and engage with your new and existing customers.