We’ve heard so many heartbreaking stories about entrepreneurs and business owners who thought 2020 was their year. They’d put in the work in 2019 to make their goals a reality— whether it was about expanding their workforce threefold or refreshing their menu and adding a live music rotation to their restaurant’s dining experience. Only, they never got to reap the rewards of their labor before the pandemic drove them from their offices and into their homes.

Keeping in contact with our clients over the phone or over Zoom is the new norm. Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

Businesses are on the Mend

Lead generation and business trends during 2020 shifted so radically that they completely changed the economic and business landscape, making lead generation more and more challenging. Now in 2021, there’s a great amount of light at the end of the tunnel and businesses everywhere are beginning to recover and get back on track.

At Promotion LA, putting your business back on the digital map is the name of the game. Here are the things we learned in 2020 about business trends and how to increase lead generation in a way that will keep you airtight during times of economic strife.

Cold calling leads and closing sales over Zoom is tough. Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

Closing Sales Digitally is Tough

It’s so much harder to close deals virtually than it is to close them in person. We’ll discuss this topic in a little more detail in our “Zoom Fatigue” blog post— out May 28, 2021. Stay tuned! 

More people are buying products online than ever. Photo by rupixen.com on Unsplash

Online Sales Increase, In-Store Visitations Decrease

It pays to have an online store. Even before 2020, buying online was an increasingly popular alternative to visiting a brick-and-mortar store. Buffing your online store with new product releases every month, a subscriber-based newsletter to entice clients to visit your site for a new product release or blog post, a blog that posts original content every two weeks, and offering exclusive or limited run products can increase a sense of exclusivity. Promoting your services and products on social media by posting and making promoted posts is a great lead generation strategy.

Stranded on a digital island, there isn’t much to do other than surf the web. Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

More Computer Time, More Effective Digital Ads

During a pandemic or during times of economic toil, people tend to have less money to spend or are physically incapable of leaving their homes. This means that they have more free time, and they’re spending a lot of it on the web to keep themselves connected with their communities. This is a great opportunity for lead generation because the longer people spend online, the more open they are to targeted ads and social media marketing strategies. Here are some effective digital marketing trends we observed from 2020 that can help you improve your long-term marketing KPIs.

When the economy gets smaller, so typically do businesses. Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Businesses Downsize

This is one of the biggest trends we noticed. When people lose their jobs en masse, the economy suffers because no one is buying anything because they can’t afford to do so. Businesses across industries will take big financial hits and are forced to make money-saving sacrifices to stay afloat. This means company wage cuts and downsizing to avoid complete company closure or bankruptcy. When companies downsize, they end up pushing a team’s worth of work onto one or two people that may not have the experience needed to be successful. This can lead to employee burnout causing less productivity and poor-quality work that will actually hurt your company and reputation more than it helps.

Why wouldn’t you continue to implement and invest in marketing strategies when your business relies on customers to buy services and products? Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

Marketing Strategies are Abandoned and Defunded Causing Stagnant Lead Generation

Now is not the time to abandon your paid and promoted marketing strategies— especially not when people are spending more and more time on the computer, giving them ample time to discover your website and products.

When it comes to marketing initiatives, businesses tend to pull back on paid promotion and large-scale marketing strategies and decide to do something much smaller in-house. When you don’t have a concentrated full-scale marketing effort run by a team of expert web designers, social media, digital marketing and SEO specialists, graphic designers, and writers, you’ll find that not only is your company not generating leads, but it’s wasting time and money in the process.

Outsourcing your digital marketing efforts by bringing on Promotion LA is more affordable than hiring a full in-house marketing department. We’ll become an extension of your company and handle your digital marketing strategies so you can focus on other aspects of your business. Plus, you don’t need to worry about paying out benefits and wages every two weeks— we can do the same work for a fraction of the price of an in-house marketing team. When you bring on an expert marketing team like Promotion LA, you’ll save money, increase your KPIs, and improve your ROI considerably.