- January 2, 2021
- 11:31 pm
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Jason Bholanauth
What a year 2020 has been!!
We went from working in our office to embracing working from home. In fact, COVID-19 tested organisations and individuals resilience within an economic downturn.
For marketers, it was a challenging period to adapt and navigate the uncertainties of the New Normal. Changing customer behaviours, decreasing budget, and retention were among the most cited in the recent State of Digital Marketing 2020-21 report
So, what are the trends shaping marketing in 2021?
Strengthening local online presence → Increasing local consumption → Innovating local products.
Local SEO
The pandemic, along with a restricted mobility, resulted in an economic downturn. Many businesses had to redefine the way they approach the market.
The call for a self-sufficient country is among the macro trends influencing local consumption. As such, we’ve seen innovative products flourishing while local e-commerce peaked. The surge in local websites is the tip of the ice-berg.
For local businesses to succeed in 2021, there needs to be an integrated approach tailored to the local market; local seo is one of them. It helps businesses to leverage on a local exposure to an audience within a specific location.
While Mauritius is a small territory, search behaviours are quite inline with global trends. For example, location based queries for “restaurants”. This is also a great opportunity for brands to get featured snippets such as local packs.
How to optimise for local seo?
- Make sure to set up your Google My Business account accurately;
- Use Schema Markup to help Google identify your business as a local one;
- Insert location keywords in your title tags and meta descriptions;
- Feature in local business listings with indexed links;
- Add your contact information on your website along with Google Map embedded;
- Get your local customers to give reviews;
- Optimised your content pages with keywords that your audience are actually searching for. Include location keywords;
- List your business on Facebook Local mobile app, Facebook Marketplace, and Instagram products tags;
- Optimise for voice search. This is becoming more than ever trending; and
- Optimise for featured snippets such as local packs.
Get this full walkthrough to setting up your local seo strategy for 2021: Click here
Learn SEO in Mauritius 🎓
Learn more on Search Engine Optimisation strategies to rank your website top on Google and generate more traffic.
Consuming products made in Moris
Restricted mobility, air freight under control, and countries’ lockdowns have resulted in less products as well as raw materials being imported.
While these contributed to slowing down the economy, it also pushed businesses to reinvent themselves and to tap into the local market. As such, we’ve seen aggressive marketing campaigns being done to attract Mauritians to hotels, or to local fairs, among others.
And, it worked. thousands of locals booked tickets to Rodrigues, went to music festivals, spent time in hotels, and consumed more local products.
However, the underlying factor to consuming local is a bit forceful or should I say a domino effect.
In fact, it stems from an uncertain economic future as unemployment rises, companies are closing down, and changing customer behaviours. They (the customers) are becoming more conscious about their spending and would prefer going for cheaper products or easily available ones.
In 2021, we can expect this trend to continue as Mauritius is highly dependent on other economies and authorities continue to navigate towards a “self-sufficient” country.
About time for purpose driven marketing with SDGs
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); you might have heard of it over the past few years. If not, here’s a brief description:
The Sustainable Development Goals are 17 goals forming a blueprint to address global challenges including poverty, climate change, peace and justice, among others by 2030. These goals urges businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solve sustainable development challenges.
Why are they more important than ever?
The pandemic brought many challenges to the society and the economy. Brands are expected to play a fundamental role in supporting their customers in these tough times. We’ve seen this during the confinement with local organisations providing food support, transportation, and innovating their services / products offerings.
Here are few examples of how brands and organisations have played an important role in 2020:
With expectations rising from customers, brands need to be purpose driven and align profits to societal benefits. In fact, SDGs are too important to be left to the marketing departments. They represents enormous opportunities which are highly relevant in the times we are living in.
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