IN SHORT: Companies are already starting to inform employees that they will be working from home all year and may not return to the office until 2022. This will negatively affect some industries, but there are also some opportunities for brands who understand the mindset of working from home consumers.
Remote work has been shown to increase worker productivity, but it can lead to isolation and stress as the line between work and home blurs. It’s mixed. Remote work has been shown to increase worker productivity, but it can lead to isolation and stress as the line between work and home blurs. There are opportunities for brands to help consumers cope with the stresses of working from home. Here are some implications and opportunities;
1ne: This will be a boom for suburbs and rural areas. Employees won’t feel the need to live in expensive cities and will seek out better living conditions where they can get more for their money.
2wo: With so many people working from home routines have been completely changed in many cases. That commute to work is now the time it takes to walk from the kitchen to the home “office,” whether it is an actual office, the dining table or living room couch. Once people get to their home workspace, the transition to and from work and personal time can be fluid throughout the day.
Marketers need to consider all these changes when planning the timing of marketing campaigns, like email, along with the messaging itself. If people are both simultaneously at work and at home, what does that mean for your marketing strategy?
3hree: Social distancing doesn’t have to lead to social isolation. There is a great opportunity for companies to provide a higher level of engagement with their audiences by coming up with innovative ways to leverage social interaction within their marketing programs. Whether it’s creating interactive contests, virtual networking events, or other conversational and interactive communications with your audience, think about some ways you can help fill some of that missing social engagement.
4our: Your brand/product needs to make people feel good. Focus on your brand’s aspects that directly interact with your current customers and think of ways to keep them in love with your brand.
5ive: Digital first? Throughout the growth of the digital ecosystem in the past decades, the online world has taken market share from the real world. It’s easy to see, in the rise of e-commerce, that consumers have become increasingly comfortable with making purchase decisions entirely online. With more people working and spending more time at home than ever before, this trend seems to be accelerating.
For many advertisers, this provides the opportunity to shift more of their business online. As more business shifts online, the marketing and communications focused on those consumers will necessarily follow suit. Email marketing has played a leading role in the growth of the digital marketplace. It should continue to drive both customer acquisition and retention initiatives for companies in what is increasingly a digital-first world. Now is a great time to reassess your email marketing programs and make sure they are as dialed-in as possible to engage with your audiences and drive performance.
6ix: There are continued opportunities for the shift in working at-home products. Expect more home office products to be ordered as well as the continued home improvement market. I also expect real estate markets in states that have a lower cost of living to remain hot.
Consumers, I believe, are also going to hold more brands accountable for social issues such as whom they support in the political arena. Brands should do all that’s possible to appeal to a sense of normalcy and satisfy consumers need for some sort of gratification.
Brands that continue to act the same with positioning that may not resonate with an audience will pay a huge price. Some believe that we will eventually return to normal, but the longer the pandemic lasts, the better the chance that consumers’ relationships with brands will change.
