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Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and
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Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in
Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future
Directions

Neeraj Pandey1

Abstract: The COVID-19 has been the worst pandemic in human history in
terms of size and scope of global spread, casualties, economic impact, and
negative effect on public health. The COVID-19 crisis has also impacted
the approach of implementation of integrated marketing communication
(IMC) and its related spend in businesses. Digital marketing, as a part of
IMC, has received more attention and spend during this crisis. Most of the
customers have moved online and are spending more time on the internet.
The customer is at the center of all marketing activities. The digital marketing
strategies adopted by organizations for connecting with customers has
also changed in this pandemic. This study focused on digital marketing
practices during the post-COVID-19 period of five companies using an
abductive case study analysis approach. It analyzed their digital marketing
strategies, growth drivers, the shift in approach, challenges, and strategies
used to manage the crisis by these organizations. The findings from the
primary data using semi-structured interviews from executives working in
the industry highlighted the importance of safety-related communication,
creative persuasive communication, paid media, adaptability, and support
from top management as key aspects in managing crisis by organizations.
The learning from the academic and managerial perspective besides future
directions for managing the pandemic crisis have also been proposed in
the study.

Keywords: COVID-19, Digital Marketing, Insights, Adaptability,

Promotion, IMC

Introduction
COVID-19 crisis had an impact on every aspect of business irrespective
of size and kind of ownership. The majority of organizations have been
struggling to survive and grow during the pandemic crisis. The organizations
like Pizza Hut, Gold Gym, JCrew retail chain, Hertz car rental company,
and Aldo shoe firm filed for bankruptcy during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the companies with a strong digital platform like Zoom, Amazon,

Associate Professor, Marketing Area, National Institute of Industrial Engineering.

1 

E-mail: npandey@nitie.ac.in, neerajpandey100@gmail.com

108 | The New Normal

Uber Eats, and Slack acquired many new customers and had a healthy growth
rate while the majority of the firms struggled for revenue and retaining
customers. Firms like Mahindra Tractors were able to achieve sales growth
in rural markets using digital marketing (www.business-standard.com).
Various researchers (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Hwang, Nageswaran
& Cho, 2020; Habes et al., 2020) have emphasized that embracing digital is
one of the efficient ways of managing this pandemic. Many of the hospital
and physicians around the world have adopted telemedicine for attending
patients during the pandemic. The number of video-based physician
consultations for COVID-19 patients hadconsistently increased since the
start of the pandemic (Greenhalgh et al., 2020). The customers were spending
more and more time on digital channels like Facebook, Instagram, Zoom,
and WhatsApp during the COVID-19 lockdown duration (He & Harris,
2020). Therefore, the use of digital marketing to reach out to customers
became important for organizations.
The use of digital marketing communications has steadily increased
in the B2B industry also since the last decade (Pandey, Nayal & Rathore,
2020). However, understanding the domain of digital marketing and how
other organizations – both B2B and B2C, are using it strategically to build a
brand and market its product and services would be critical for building its
own digital marketing strategy.

Literature Review
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many conservative firms to go online
(Hwang, Nageswaran & Cho, 2020). The retailers are turning to omni-channel
to reach out to customers. The sellers who had an omni-channel distribution
network were quick to adapt to the government-imposed lockdown situation
whereas retailers having no or less presence in online channels took time
to build or ramp it up (Hwang, Nageswaran & Cho, 2020). The COVID-19
crisis also witnessed the phenomenon of competition. In this phenomenon,
the competing firms were also sharing information with each other, and
displayed cooperation between the firms. The examples include sharing
of technical knowledge in the manufacturing of products, joint efforts to
develop a vaccine, and sharing stock level information during the pandemic
(Crick & Crick, 2020).
The organizations used digital marketing based on analytics to reach out
to the target customer as direct channel options have reduced or were not
functional due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of augmented reality,
virtual reality, and artificial intelligence (AI) is also being used to target
customers. The use of channels like WhatsApp, Zoom, and Google Meet
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 109

increased multi-fold during the COVID-19 crisis (He & Harris, 2020; Donthu
& Gustafsson, 2020). Hence, digital marketing is excessively being used by
organizations to target customers including high-involvement products like
real estate, automobiles, and servers.
Amazon is using augmented intelligence which emphasizes using
the optimal use of human inputs and machine learning applications in
its predictions and customer-based processes (https://aws.amazon.com/
augmented-ai/). Amazon calls this service Amazon A2I. It uses an AI-
based chatbot and automated website curation based on the customer
search history on the portal. The automated digital advertisements are
delivered to customers based on search words and browsing history.
Techniques like text mining and image analytics also help digital marketers
in enhancing their precision in reaching out to the target customers during
the pandemic.
Many organizations used social media campaigns as part of corporate
social responsibility to make citizens aware of social distance and mask
to bring attitudinal change in citizens (Habes et al., 2020). The iconic
Nike brand which advocated playing outside with advertisements like
“Move more move better” has recently changed the advertisement tagline
and emphasized playing indoors, rather than venturing outside. The
advertisement by Nike became an instant hit on social media. The brands
required creativity to be used in more agile ways to create a timely impact
during the pandemic (Balis, 2020). Mende and Mishra (2020) compared the
enormity of COVID-19 situation implications with global climate change.
There was found a need to develop dynamic capability in organizations to
respond to such crises by realigning systems for product re-development,
developing new strategic alliances, and taking initiatives for value-creating
activities during pandemic (Seetharaman, 2020).

Methodology
The study used two methodologies for exploring the finding and drawing
conclusions from the case study and semi-structured interviews. Firstly,
the study used the abduction method of case study analysis (Dubois
& Gadde, 2002). The abductive case study analysis was based on the
inference philosophy given by Charles S. Pierce (Timmermans & Tavory,
2012). This approach sequentially built inferences from case studies and
allowed variation based on in-case patterns (Tavory & Timmermans, 2014).
Secondly, a long interview using McCracken’s (1998) method was used for
interviewing the executives working in the industry.
110 | The New Normal

Digital Marketing Case Studies during

COVID-19 Pandemic
The pandemic was a tough time for businesses. The organizations which did
not have their product and services in essential items were completely shut.
However, some of the organizations were able to navigate the crisis using
digital initiatives. The case study of the few such organizations, based on the
secondary data and semi-structured interview with the employees of these
organizations, is discussed below.

Asian Paints
The paint is a non-essential item. The months of April and May 2020
were tough months for Asian Paints. The organization got positive media
mentions due to its announcement of salary increments for its employees
and payment of dues to its contractors. The Asian paints started a creative
digital campaign named “Beautiful Homes Your Way” where it provided
customized home paint solutions to the customers. It used paid, owned, and
earned social media to promote the campaign. The campaign started as a
paid media campaign and later was seeded with its own and earned media
campaign. However, there was no use of any influencers in the campaign.
The July month saw double-digit growth due to the digital marketing
campaign (Malviya, 2020).
Asian Paints started a ‘Safe Painting Service’ two-part digital marketing
campaign. The campaign highlighted the contactless safe painting protocol.
The digital campaign explained emotionally how Asian Paints had trained
the painters regarding safety, well-being, and customized painting services.
Along similar lines, Asian Paints also launched “Do it Yourself” and “Above
the Line” digital marketing campaigns in the post- lockdown that resulted
in positive sales.

Ceat Tyres
The top management of Ceat Tyres, an RPG group company, used bold
digital marketing strategies to connect with customers during the pandemic.
It chose new digital channels to reach out to the customers during COVID-19
besides connecting with its dealers. The Ceat Tyre management gave the
dealer full incentive in April 2020 based on the historical sales data as the
March sales were quite low due to the outbreak of the pandemic in that
month and subsequent complete lockdown by the Indian government. This
boosted the dealer network morale and loyalty towards the organization.
Later, Ceat Tyres tied up with Amazon to use its portal for selling tyres
directly to the customers. It provided free contactless installation of tyres
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 111

at the customer’s doorstep (Express Drives Desk, 2020). The Ceat Tyres
ran a digital marketing campaign to popularize it. This was a significant
shift in two ways – one was selling tyres directly to customers as
traditionally it was done the dealer network; and secondly, it gave Ceat
Tyres direct touch with customers and data about customer preferences
and buying patterns. The online B2C sales on Amazon went from 2 percent
to approximately 14 percent which was happening the first time in the
organization.
Ceat Tyres invested heavily in upgrading its own B2B e-commercial
portal so that it was the best in the industry. The entire organizational setup
moved online quickly after the pandemic outbreak which reflects the agility
of the organization. For example – the permanent journey plan of the sales
employees was submitted and monitored online. It also started new revenue
streams by starting the GoSafe range of products. These included branded
masks and personal protective equipment (PTI, 2020). Ceat Tyres kept an
eye on the business environment during the pandemic and was able to get
new orders after many Chinese tyre players exited the Indian market. In
May 2020, it partnered with Ogilvy India to launch a social media campaign
regarding its support and gratitude to truck drivers carrying essential
commodities (Tewari, 2020). It created high goodwill for Ceat Tyre due to
the high visibility of the campaign on social media besides positive mentions
in the popular press.

Zoom Video Communications, Inc.

Zoom Inc. was one of the few companies which witnessed phenomenal
growth in subscription during the pandemic. The brand became synonymous
with the video communication category. It follows a freemium pricing
model. Zoom Inc. has constantly upgraded its features to deter the multi-
homing phenomenon by its subscribers. It has provided the Facebook
Live feature integrated with its platform besides other team collaboration
features. The installations of the Zoom app have increased by 728% (Sloan,
2020). The digital marketing campaign of Zoom Inc has highlighted the
security aspect of the platform besides trust and privacy issues. It also used
attribution models to reallocate advertising budget (www.saastr.com). Zoom
Inc. increased its digital advertising budget during the COVID-19 crisis
(www.toolbox.com).
The marketing campaigns of Zoom Inc. focused on building a strong
partnership and its passion for the customer. It resonated quite well with the
customers. However, it is also important to mention that Zoom Inc. had been
mired into hacking and server location issues. Few government departments
112 | The New Normal

in the USA and India had therefore banned its services (Steinhoff &
Palmatier, 2020).

Mahindra Tractors
Mahindra Tractors was able to clear its inventory in post-COVID by using
digital marketing with a focus on rural and smaller towns. There have
been large migration from urban areas to rural areas during the COVID-19
pandemic. Most of them had adequate purchasing power as they had spent
considerable time working in urban areas. A part of such a population
was planning to stay back for a year or more and undertake farming in a
more organized manner. Mahindra Tractors targeted this population using
digital marketing. The majority of the population in rural areas in India
access the internet on their mobile. The good Kharif crop backed by a
digital campaign targeted at rural masses led to growth in sales of Mahindra
Tractors to the tune of 69% year-on-year basis in August 2020 (Jaiswal,
2020).
Mahindra Tractors used paid media including search and display
advertisements to reach out to the target customers. This was in addition
to the owned media where it advertised on its social media handles. It was
able to attract media buzz of its social media campaigns, thereby providing
it earned media advantage also. Mahindra Tractors also gave promotional
offers for discounts and financing options to prospective customers. The
campaigns with promotional offers nudged the target customers who
were thinking about buying tractors. Swaraj Tractors, which is part of the
Mahindra and Mahindra group, has also created a Facebook community page
for farmers as a part of their overall digital strategy. (www.socialsamosa.
com/2020). This helped in building emotional connect with the farming
community besides boosting sales of tractors.

Uber Eats
Uber Eats is a food delivery app company. Uber Eats, based in California,
used digital marketing practices to reach out to small businesses during the
COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to a sort of customers going on
strike. The small restaurants relied heavily on day-to-day cash flow coming
from dining customers. They, unlike large restaurant chains, did not have
deep pockets to weather the pandemic storm. The small restaurants explored
alternate channels to deliver the food. A large number of small restaurants
joined the Uber Eats platform during the pandemic (Raj, Sundararajan
& You, 2020). Uber Eats used data-driven online campaigns to attract
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 113

customers. It used the previous food ordering history of subscribers to

send targeted digital coupons to prospective customers. Digital coupons
are more effective than paper coupons (Pandey and Maheshwari, 2017).
The coupons enhanced sales of Uber Eats partners. Uber Eats also actively
promoted its campaign using social media channels like Instagram
and Facebook.
The digital platforms provided an opportunity for small players to
compete with larger players (Pandey, Jha & Singh, 2020; Einav, Farronato
& Levin, 2016). For each transaction, Uber Eats took a commission from
the restaurant for each order depending on the bill amount besides taking
delivery charges from the customer. This model was a win-win model for
Uber Eats (commission revenue), the restaurant (additional revenue), and
the customer (home-delivered food). Uber Eats also leveraged positive
reviews by sharing it on its various digital channels.

Semi-structured Interviews
The employees working in the above organizations were approached for
a semi-structured interview. A total of fourteen semi-structured long
interviews were conducted. The respondents were from the marketing
functional area and had an average experience of eleven years in the industry.
The central research question was “How their organization was managing
the digital marketing strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic situation”.
There were leading general questions followed by below four specific
questions:
• RQ1: How were your sales affected during the pandemic?
• RQ2: What was the marketing strategy of your organization during the
pandemic?
• RQ3: What digital marketing strategy your firm is adopting to handle
the crisis and promote sales?
• RQ4: What according to you is the best coping mechanism, from a
marketing perspective, to handle this crisis?
The responses varied, however common themes emerged out regarding
how organizations were handling the COVID-19 pandemic, from a
marketing context (Table 1). It was found that it is more about the leadership
role (style) and the agility of the organization to adapt to the new normal
that is making a difference in the organization. The sample responses and
emerged theme has been identified below:
114 | The New Normal

Table 1: Sample Quotes from Semi-structured Interviews

Grouping of
S. Key Words (S.
Quote by Respondents Key Words Theme
No. No. Source in
Bracket)
1. Asian paints always took Safety, priority, Safety (1, 3, 5, Perceived
safety as a top priority in each initiatives, 17), priority (1), Safety
of the initiatives during the pandemic, pandemic (1),
pandemic – be it Beautiful creative passionate (2),
Homes Your Way service or campaign plant safety (2),
the Safe Painting creative protocols (2),
campaign. social distancing
2. We are known in the industry Passionate, (2), wellness
to be passionate about plant safety, (3), care (3),
plant safety – so when it protocols, social working from
came to safety there was no distancing, home (7)
let away in protocols like digital
social distancing, masks, communications
and sanitizers whereas
physical human movement
was there. Each building
had a contactless sanitizer
dispensing machine. All our
internal and external digital
communications highlight it.
3. The campaign communication Campaign,
was persuasive to bring about communication,
attitudinal change towards persuasive,
safety and wellness. It showed attitudinal
Ceat cares more about you change, safety,
and society rather than the wellness, care
business only.
4. There is so much digital Digital
communication during the communication,
COVID-19 by brands. I ensure brands, creative,
that our media message is informative,
creative, informative, and pertinent,
pertinent to ensure high visibility,
visibility and engagement. engagement,
We also keep an eye on cyber cyber fraud,
fraud by using chatbot so that chatbot
each rupee spent is worth it.
5. Having content based on Content, Creative Creative
emotional bonds and safety emotional bond, campaign (1, 3, persuasive
helped us connect well with safety, connect 4, 17), digital communi-
the audience. communications cation
(2, 3), persuasive
(3), attitudinal
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 115

Grouping of
S. Key Words (S.
Quote by Respondents Key Words Theme
No. No. Source in
Bracket)
6. Agility is key to success in the Agility, faster, change (3),
pandemic. The faster one gets digital mode, brands (4),
to digital mode with respect processes pertinent (4),
to processes and customer Content (5, 17),
interface, would be the winner. emotional bond
7. My take is that the campaign Paid media, (5), connect (5),
starts with paid media and earned media, digital mode (6),
ends with earned media. The sustained earned media
desired results are quick with engagement, (7), sustained
paid advertisements. However, owned media, engagement
if one wants a sustained shared media, (7), owned
engagement, we also need to working from media (7),
be owned and shared media home shared media
to support it. Interestingly, the (7), humour
consumers have more time (9), informative
for the internet as he or she (4, 9), utility
is working from home due to (9), consumer
COVID-19. engagement (9),
brainstormed
8. The banner advertisement Banner (14), brand
using Google Adwords has advertisement, message (17)
worked quite well for my Google
organization. It is quite cost- Adwords, cost,
effective, given the click click conversion
conversion we have got during
the pandemic.
9. The advertisement should humour, Digital Paid
have humour or be informative informative, communication Media
or have some utility to utility, consumer (4, 13), visibility
consumers, then only it engagement (4), engagement
will have high consumer (4, 13), cyber
engagement. fraud (4), a
10. We were able to pull off Top management chatbot (4),
well in time due to the top support, paid media (7,
management support. We freedom, 13, 15), banner
were given full freedom to transform, faster advertisement
transform into a digital system. decision making, (8), Google
It led to faster decision making experiment AdWords (8,
and gave space to experiment. 16), cost (8),
click conversion
11. Analytics is an important Analytics, (8), digital
part of our digital strategy. digital strategy, strategy (11, 15),
It provides insights into my insights, insights (11),
e-commerce sales funnel. e-commerce e-commerce
It helped to navigate and sales funnel, sales funnel
optimize our marketing budget marketing (11), marketing
allocation for search and budget, search, budget (11),
display based advertisement in display based search (11),
this pandemic. advertisement display based
116 | The New Normal

Grouping of
S. Key Words (S.
Quote by Respondents Key Words Theme
No. No. Source in
Bracket)
advertisement
(11, 16), unique
visitors (16)
12. Ours is a customer-driven Customer-driven Initiatives Adapt-
organization. We are adapting organization, (1), agility ability
and changing to align with the adapting, (6), faster (6),
new normal. changing, align processes (6),
with the new transform (10),
normal analytics (11),
13. We started the digital Digital customer-driven
communication on social communication, organization
media as a paid. We saw high paid, user (12), adapting
user engagement in terms of engagement (12), changing
likes, shares, and comments. (12), align with
Maybe COVID-forced WFH the new normal
(work from home) is helping (12)
individuals spend more time
on the internet.
14. We brainstormed and thought Brainstormed,
out of the box. The top top management
management involvement kept involvement,
us motivated to work closely motivated
with agencies. All the digital
campaigns that we ran were
highly successful.
15. Leadership style is very Leadership style,Top management Support
important in such challenging connecting, support (10), by Top
situations. Connecting with digital strategy,freedom (10), Manage-
employees, channel partners paid media faster decision ment
and customer is much more making (10),
important than digital strategy. experiment (10),
No doubt, we focused strongly top management
on paid media to reach out to involvement
the customers in a big way. (14), motivated
16. I have found Google AdWord Google AdWord, (14), leadership
and Facebook display Facebook style (15),
advertisements effective in display connecting (15)
getting unique visitors. advertisement,
unique visitors
17. In each digital campaign, Digital
we highlighted the safety campaign, safety
aspects – both for employees aspects, message
and customers. The message content, brand
content was more important. message
The brand message came
in the latter part of the
advertisement content.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 117

Analysis and Discussions

The study analyzed the digital marketing initiatives taken by five
organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was followed by a
semi-structured interview with the employees of these organizations. The
underlying idea was to understand the digital initiatives taken by these
organizations to cope up with the pandemic situation regarding reaching out
to the employees, customers, and channel partners. The discussions with the
respondents centered around four research questions. Five themes emerged
out of the analysis. They are:

Perceived Safety
The digital communication during the pandemic from the organizations had a
safety message in it. This was done to make the customers aware of COVID-19
related safety guidelines besides showing that the organization was sensitive
to these issues not only for customers but also for the employees and other
stakeholders. This helped organizations win the trust of the customers. The
“safety” was the topmost concern for customers while ordering online or
visiting retail stores. The organization’s digital communication strategy
must have this element. This boosted customer confidence in the brand. For
Example – one of the most successful advertisements of Asian Paints “Har
Ghar Kucch Kehta Hai” (literal translation – every home communicates
a message) had “stay home, stay safe” as a central theme. The entire
advertisement had focused on safety and celebrating being at home, and the
brand appears only in the last 4 seconds in a 60-second commercial.
The perceived safety provided confidence to the customers to visit
the store and order products online. The digital communication to the
customers shared the standard operating procedures (SOPs) being followed
at the physical store and warehouses of the organization. The keyword
like safety, priority, protocols, stay home, social distancing, and care; in
digital marketing communication to the customers will help in retaining old
customers and attracting new customers. The safety message in social media
also helped in getting earned media as employees, customers, regulators,
and other individuals share this message in their respective social media
handles.

Creative Persuasive Communication

The digital marketing content by the organizations should be creatively
designed. It should use the science of persuasive communication in the
content. The content of the campaign should be precise and must have
emotional appeal. The creative content received higher earned media through
118 | The New Normal

likes, shares, and comments. For example – Uber Eats launched a creative
banner advertisement as “Your go-to restaurant in the comfort of your
home”. The banner advertisement had moving visuals of local cuisine as per
the location of the user (www.thinkwithgoogle.com). This advertisement
became an instant hit and garnered a lot of views, likes, shares, and mentions
on social media. Many of the existing Uber subscribers engaged with the
advertisement.
The content, which is logical, emotive, and authentic will qualify as
persuasive content. The team-lead of the digital marketing strategy must
ensure that the advertisement content qualifies on these criteria. The
advertisements with creative persuasive communication help in bringing
attitudinal change in consumers. During the COVID-19 pandemic,
organizations like Asian Paints, Ceat Tyres, Uber Eats, etc. released various
digital content to motivate citizens to maintain social distancing, wear
a mask, and sanitize their hands after touching public open surfaces like
ATM and biometric screens. The consistency of such messages had helped
in bringing attitudinal and behavioral changes among the masses. Similarly,
the “hand washing campaign” by the Dettol brand using creative persuasive
communication had resulted in the desired results of behavioral change
towards hygiene. The digital marketing team must brainstorm to come up
with content, which is persuasive, authentic, and must have an emotional
appeal for getting sustained customer engagement with the brand.

Paid Media
The majority of the respondents felt that managing the promotion budget
between different advertisement channels is a tight rope walk. The search
advertisement has its own advantage of precise reach with higher click-
through-rates (CTR[1]) but inhibits higher investment in this channel due to
its comparatively higher cost. However, all the respondents agreed that the
paid media was giving them the best and faster results. The campaigns started
with the paid media which was supported by the owned and shared media of
the organization and the partner advertisement agency. The pandemic saw
the highest spike in investment in paid media as the organization was under
revenue pressure to get assured CTR results. The reliance on the owned and
earned media had reduced during the COVID-19 period. The organizations
were not willing to take chance or experiment as there was already enough
business environment uncertainty due to the ongoing pandemic situation.
The paid media during the pandemic was dominated by Google search
and Facebook display advertisements in the organization. The respondents
CTR is number of the clicks divided by number of impressions. It is one of the
[1] 

most popular digital marketing metrics.

Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 119

shared that the advertisement budget allocation by organizations on

Instagram’s social media channel was increasing. This is because Instagram
is one of the fastest-growing social media channels in terms of the number
of subscribers. It has also a high youth following and subscription. The paid
media was also helping in garnering a greater number of unique visitors to
the landing page sites during the pandemic. The respondents also shared that
cyber fraud was on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic. The marketing
team keeps on randomly checking that the advertisement impressions were
being uploaded at allocated publisher sites and no chatbots were being used
by the agency. All these checks helped in ensuring that the paid media resulted
in real customer engagement, thereby leading to better CTR and  sales.

Adaptability
The analysis of the case study and semi-structured interviews with marketing
executives consistently highlighted that adaptability of organizations was
the key to emerge as a winner from this pandemic crisis. The organizations
which were agile to adapt to digital mode and built-in system and processes
quickly as the pandemic started have started showing positive financial
results from the third quarter of the year 2020. The adaptability was not
only in terms of putting digital infrastructure in place in the organization but
also change in the employee mindset and organizational culture for being
productive in a digital business environment. The adaptability in the current
pandemic situation was also forced on organizations as it was sudden and
prolonged with no precedence in size and scope.
The analysis also showed that the speed of adaptability was of critical
importance. Organizations like Zoom Video Communications, Inc., Asian
Paints, and Mahindra Tractors were achieving a better financial result in the
post-pandemic situation because of the early changes these organizations
made as the pandemic started. Zoom brought many policies and feature
changes to its platform as the pandemic started. It is the fastest-growing
video communication platform which is also reflected in the growing share
prices of the company. The adaptive approach backed by digitization and
robotics technology infusion in manufacturing and warehouses is the new
normal during the pandemic. However, it would require resource allocation
by the respective organizations besides the top management support.

Support by Top Management

The analysis showed that all the organizations like Asian Paints, Ceat
Tyres, Mahindra Tractors, Uber Eats, and Zoom Video Communications,
Inc. were able to transform themselves and managed the COVID-19 crisis
efficiently due to support by top management. The top management was
120 | The New Normal

actively involved in forming teams of senior executives to carry out various

transformation exercise in the company. The top management ensured that
all the employees were kept informed about the major decisions taken in the
organization and especially those impacting them.
The respondents shared that the team related to digital transformation and
new initiatives had the full support of top management to manage resources
for creating digital orientation within the organization. The teams took the
help of consultants and digital agencies besides input from internal teams to
shift to online collaborative tools to facilitate work from home (WFH) for
employees. The digital platforms of the organizations were updated. In some
cases, new cloud-based software services were subscribed to facilitate sales
planning, tracking, and optimization. These changes required faster decision
making and approval by top management. All the respondents believed the
dynamic capability of the organizations can be leveraged in crises only by
providing autonomy to teams and faster approval of the changes by top
management. This is in line with the dynamic capability theory proposed by
Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997).

Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

The epidemiologists have predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic is going
to stay for more number of years (Scudellari, 2020). The businesses must
not only learn to live with it for another few more years but also plan
how to better handle similar scenarios if it gets repeated in the future.
The analysis had shown that in the digital marketing strategy during the
COVID-19 pandemic, the paid media was the most effective in getting
required engagement in terms of CTR as compared to earned, owned, and
shared media. This was true for all the five organizations that were covered
in this study. All the organizations should also have awareness, practice,
and internalization of business continuity plans (BCP). The BCP is all
about proactive contingency planning to ensure that there is resilience in
organizations if there is a major crisis within the company. It was found that
organizations that had BCP had a higher chance of survival and growth in
crises as compared to firms that did not adopt BCP (Savage, 2002).
The study suggests the following digital initiatives for organizations in
the near future to manage their business in the post-COVID-19 scenario for
survival and growth, both in the short-term and long-term scenario:

Strengthening the Digital DNA

The organizations during the pandemic phase should keep on strengthening
their digital DNA. The digital DNA consists of digitally-savvy employees,
faster decision making using digital platforms, digital connectivity, and
Digital Marketing Strategies for Firms in Post COVID-19 Era: Insights and Future Directions  | 121

state-of-art digital infrastructure. It helps to connect seamlessly with all

stakeholders in the organization. This will help in reducing operational
costs, promote innovation, and enhance agility to manage similar crises in
the future. The digital orientation would also help to leverage the power
of the latest techniques like deep learning, machine learning, and artificial
intelligence for reaching out to target customers, feedback, and new product
development. It would also help in harnessing the power of social networking
sites for the marketing of our products as we have witnessed increased screen
time of consumers on social media during the pandemic. Going forward,
developing a digital mindset as a part of organizational culture should be
a major change management exercise. The deeper the digital DNA in an
organization, the more resilient and stronger it would be in a post-pandemic
world.

Check Against Cyber Frauds in Digital Marketing

The COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed cybercrimes including digital
advertisement-related frauds (Buil-Gil et al., 2020). The organizations, while
increasing their budget on digital marketing, must be vigilant about invalid
traffic being generated by chatbots or by agency linked agents. Such activity
makes the organizations bleed dollars for each (fake) click as per cost-per-
click (CPC) agreements without any authentic customer engagement. The
machine learning and deep learning tools help detect the invalid traffic
and block such fake clicks on a real-time basis. The authenticity of claims
regarding the number of impressions on social media by the hired advertising
agency also needs to be checked by the advertiser (the organization which is
paying for the advertisement). The advertiser wants and believes that they are
showing a digital advertisement to real persons, however, it may not happen
every time. There are also millions of fake websites which is not visited by
any humans. The impressions on these fake websites are seen by automated
bots. Hence, there is a need to check cybercrime like the use of chatbots for
clicking or checking advertisement, domain spoofing, and the use of botnets.
Many large organizations use third-party services to verify the delivery of
digital advertisements. These third parties were appointed by advertisers
to keep a tab or cross-check the impressions, CTR, engagement duration,
etc. claims made by the advertising agency. Therefore, the organizations in
the post-pandemic scenario need to be cautious so that each rupee spent on
digital marketing results in desired customer engagement.

Business Continuity Plan

The organizations – big and small, should be made aware of the relevance
and importance of a business continuity plan (BCP). The BCP drills should
122 | The New Normal

be done in organizations at least once each quarter. The BCP should

also include cyber-attack, data theft, and advertisement fraud. The BCP
scenario building should also consider shifting consumer preferences using
consumer analytics. The worst-case scenario may be that the organization’s
product and services become redundant given the shift in technology
and customer’s taste. The contingency plan for a quick recovery in such
a scenario should be part of the revised BCP. The BCP exercise should
consider how to protect brand reputation and sales in a situation like the
current coronavirus pandemic. The worst-case BCP conditions related to
digital marketing include the closure of social media channels, the exit of
the entire digital marketing team from an organization, or the resignation of
the digital marketing head of the team. The BCP should ensure that there is a
plan for fast recovery from the crisis and its implementation of a pre-decided
strategy at the time of the crisis.

Focus on Growth Segments

The precision in terms of targeting customers would be critical in the
post-pandemic business scenario. This would require leveraging data and
technology to find growth segments in the target market. There is a need to
revisit the older target segment to further narrow the most potential target
segment. This new focused target segment (also called growth segments)
would lead to a higher conversion with a lesser investment of resources
including the least cost per conversion. The behavioural targeting using
customer digital footprints besides retargeting and personalized offerings
would be a game-changer for the organizations. The growth segments
within the existing target segment should be delineated using the behavioral
targeting method. The majority of the digital marketing budget must
be invested in these growth segments to get maximum conversions. The
positioning in these growth segments must include health/safety aspects
either in the product, delivery process, installation, and related aspects
during the entire duration of the pandemic phase.

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About the Author

Dr. Neeraj Pandey is an Associate Professor of Marketing at NITIE
Mumbai. He did his Post-Doc at Johns Hopkins University, USA in the
area of healthcare pricing. He has authored two Books besides publications
in reputed international journals. His research and teaching interests are
Pricing, Digital Marketing, and B2B Marketing.

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