Where do I begin? Covid-19 has rocked my world. I used to live 12 minutes from John Wayne Airport, I had TSA pre-check and Clear, all so I could travel around the country from event to event with ease. Now I spent my days chained to my moon pod on a continuous loop of Zoom calls planning virtual and digital activities. All while trying to appear like I'm not wearing sweatpants.
So how has Covid-19 changed marketing? Let's go over my top 3 changes.
Zoom Ready: Like any other office profession–in mid-March, there was a sudden expectation that I had my webcam on for all meetings. Which meant I had to look presentable, which isn’t always a given. I had to stop multitasking during the day. Turns out doing your dishing while on a team call is frowned upon.
Marketing is a very engaging and detail-oriented profession. I don’t know a single marketer that doesn’t operate at warp speed at all times. Chaining us to zoom for endless meetings has been challenging. But making us do it with styled hair is utter torture.
Adios 2020 Physical Events: Marketers are used to pivoting and adjusting their plans as things change, targets move, and not uncommon. But, with COVID-19, we had to take off the table one of the most fundamental tools in a marketers tool-kit, EVENTS.
I wanted to pull my hair out the day that my organization decided to pull out all in-person events. I had conducted weeks of research for the best venues and activations. I depended on many in-person events, both hosted and third-party, to create MQL, pipeline, and close deals.
Webinars are BAE: No offense, but before Covid-19, I couldn’t have cared less about webinars. I attended them occasionally for professional development but never included webinars in my marketing plans. I mean, never ever.
Leaning hard on webinars has had a pretty challenging ripple effect. The low demand generation manager had to multiply their workload by x10000 (more like infinity). Marketing lists are being inundated with information and events. And finally, SDRs/BDRs are being overworked to follow up on every lead that attended or signed up for a webinar.
Shit Show: There is no other way to put it. Covid-19 has pushed all of us personally and professionally to the edge.
If you’re a marketer and want to pull your hair out–hit up hello@saleswhale.com, and let’s see if Saleswhale can help ease the load of this chaos. At a minimum, we can be a shoulder to cry on.
