The Covid-19 global pandemic changed everything! From the more obvious social distancing and mask-wearing to singing happy birthday every time we washed our hands. As the pandemic appears, thankfully, to be reaching its end, we are taking a look at how Covid has changed the way in which businesses promote themselves and engage with the public.
Covid-19 impacted businesses in a multitude of ways. For example, work from home mandates, supply chain disruptions, forced closures, and redundancies just to name a few. Here at Push Promotions, we felt the pandemic harshly and immediately, being a promotional staffing agency, the national lockdowns (and increasing public precautions pre-lockdown) caused all of our events to be cancelled.
However, promotional campaigns have begun to bounce back, with companies desperately trying to win over potential customers. The public fully are fully embracing their post-lockdown freedom! Keep reading to discover how to adapt to post-pandemic promotion.
Push can provide a large variety of promotional staff to work at post-pandemic promotion events all over the UK. For example, we have experiencing supplying hosts & hostesses, product demonstrators, sales staff, and more.
QR Codes
The use of QR Codes has grown exponentially during the last 18 months. With restaurants, bars, and the like, requiring us to ‘check in’ to venues to enable contact tracing. Because of this, the majority of the public is now familiar with QR codes, utilising them in your next post-pandemic promotion campaign is, therefore, a must.
They are handy, small, contact-free ways of relaying information. QR codes can lead to email sign-up pages, product information, online videos, competitions, and more. People are also always intrigued as to what a QR code will reveal!
There are countless free QR code generators online, and with modern smart-phone, specific QR code scanners are no longer required, with smartphone cameras able to scan the codes within an instant.
Post-Pandemic Food Sampling
Food sampling is a promotional staple that completely disappeared during the pandemic. Although medical experts assured us that Covid-19 was not transmissible through food, food samples were still largely avoided as a precautionary measure.
Offering free samples is a great way for the public to engage with your product, and creates a memorable and emotive experience with your brand. This differentiates it from the competition. With food products, the taste test is the best way to win over customers and create a loyal audience.
As people become more confident post-lockdown, food samples are reappearing. However to encourage public engagement, make sure you are very clearly following hygiene guidelines. For example, with your staff wearing obvious gloves, and having hand-sanitiser readily available. Push have made staff available with Level 2 Food Hygiene Certification. Click here to read about some of the events that we have previously worked at.
Contactless Payments
Have you noticed that buskers now often have a contactless card reader alongside their coin-collecting guitar case? People simply do not carry cash the way they used to. Some people even consider entering their debit/credit card pins as a waste of time. Contactless card payments are therefore essential to modern-day retail, even more so since the pandemic increased hygiene anxiety.
With the use of Apply Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay for example, the public does not even need contactless cards anymore to make contactless transactions. They only need their mobile phones. This therefore makes spontaneous purchases more likely.
If you are hoping to make sales during your promotional/marketing campaign, it is unlikely that you will be reaching contactless payment limits (which are continuing to rise).Using contactless payments are therefore definitely something to consider. They are quick and easy.
Podcasts
Podcasts were already on the rise before the pandemic. However, with lockdown restrictions forcing people to stay home and look for new entertainment, the podcast industry proved to be one of the industries that benefited from worldwide disruption. Some of the UK’s most popular podcasts are Steven Bartlett’s ‘Diary Of A CEO’, and ‘Off Menu’ with comedians James Acaster and Ed Gamble.
With an estimated 20 million podcast listeners in the UK alone (in 2022), and podcast subjects covering nearly every niche. Therefore using a popular or subject-related podcast to promote your company could result in big business and mass brand awareness. Consider paying for an advert podcast (similar to a radio advert), or reaching out to hosts and getting yourself featured as a podcast guest.
Most popular podcasts gained their wide audience via word-of-mouth publicity, something which you can benefit from by working with podcasts.
Post-Pandemic Masks
Although masks are gradually losing their prominence as Government rules are relaxed, at the height of the pandemic masks offered companies a unique opportunity to promote themselves.
Acting as wearable promotion, many companies sold or gave away face masks branded with their logo. This was a powerful promotional tool considering that masks were being worn nearly everywhere. They essentially acted as wearable business cards. They promoted the company, whilst also protecting the user and public from Covid transmission.
Only time will tell if masks will remain popular enough to remain a viable promotional tool.
Post-Pandemic Promotion
The Covid-19 global pandemic affected nearly every aspect of our lives. And for businesses, the way in which they promote to their target audience was also substantially altered. The factors mentioned above are not an exhaustive list by any means. For example social media marketing and Zoom calls are some of the other ways in which companies promoted themselves during the pandemic.
The pandemic is still not over, and until then we will not know the full impact of it on promotional campaigns and marketing strategies. But until then, hopefully, the factors above will help you to plan your post-lockdown promo activity.
