How has the crisis around Covid-19 changed communication and marketing strategies ? Find out more in our 3-part interview series. In this article with the marketing manager Mongezi Mtati from Ornico, a media monitoring company based in South Africa.
Mongezi is the marketing manager at Ornico, a media monitoring company based in South Africa where he is in charge of marketing and communication both internal and external for the company. He also works with the sales team to refine sales strategies.
Q1/ Did you change strategy following the Covid-19?
We absolutely did, we had to. One of the biggest changes for us was that we needed to change our communication from a sales development approach to a more empathic approach in line with where the nation is and where the world is. You cannot really be doing hot sales marketing and communication; You have to be empathic and consider it of where the world and clients are at the moment.
Q2/ The crisis has accelerated the digitalization of companies, which, in turn, will allow companies to overcome this crisis. Do you agree?
Yes, I agree. A lot of our physical events had to adapt and change from physical events to digital and online one. Even though it must have been a big change for our customers and prospects, digital has allowed us to maintain communication. And this, thanks to online meetings and digital events. One of our biggest thing that we’re doing at the moment, we are sharing weekly infographic on our site and various other media platform that enables the public to see how covid 19 is being covered in the media, which media platform cover it the most, etc. We are finding that traditional media does not have the most amount of mentions compare to online ones. Because online media platform allows to right up few stories a day, and traditional media are unable to do that. But we are finding that tradition platform is still the most trusted and the one with the most audience. So, what we are doing is using some of our capabilities to share what the media is doing and saying about covid 19 in south Africa. We look forward to seeing how digital will transform our world and how business will respond to it.
Q3/ Have you increase the number of webinars, social media posts, etc.?
What have increased is the frequency of our posts on our website. We saw an opportunity to utilize our skill and our capabilities to share with business and the public what is happening in the media coverage in south Africa around covid 19. We also got more clients facing our webinars and calls that we do with groups of people around our offering and changes that are coming to them and their business. We saw an increase in client communication in the first part and we also saw an increase in engagement on social media. And we’ve also noticed an increase in conversations with our customers about specific needs they have right now.
Q4/ What tools or methods will you keep after this period?
We are definitely going to have more virtual meeting, that s one tool that ll we keep. We’ll also continue having virtual gatherings with clients where they don’t need to travel to our office that’s something that we definitely going to use and we going to increase our the digitalization of our communication with clients and with the public. We usually use zoom and GoToMeeting as well as various webinar tools.
Q5/ Did you have to make compromises? Cancelling events maybe?
We had to make quite a number of changes, because a lot of our work required our collaborators to be at the office. And we had to move from being at the office to working from home. It was also necessary to enable our employees to contact our customers in an efficient way. All this in a short period of time.
Q6/ Do you already have post-confinement marketing projects or strategy?
One of our biggest goal following the covid 19 crisis is to maintain stability, to assist our clients with their own adjustments and communicate with them with their changed needs. And find ways to communicate effectively while being considered the fact the pandemic with still be with us. Things won’t be the same, so the mission is to adjust to a new normal and keeping things stable.
