With times of quarantine and fewer outings for most adults in place during the past several months, marketing trends changed in a hurry.

The second wave of increased cases of COVID-19 has begun, which means we are in danger of being told to stay home again, making the dynamic changes that have been put in place more important than ever. With these things in mind, you can see how marketing trends have changed during 2020.

The “New Normal” Brings Us a Different Way to Gather Information

When COVID-19 hit the Western World we quickly learned that many of us can work from home. Unless you physically need to be at a location to do a job, there’s a good chance your company chose to create a virtual environment for your work to continue. While this could not have been possible twenty or thirty years ago, we have the technology to make it happen.

Not only are more of us working from home than ever before, but more of us are also spending time reviewing products and services more fully before making a decision. You don’t have the long commute to work, which means you now have more time than ever to make sure you make the right choice. With that in mind, these five marketing trends have grown during the COVID-19 months that we’ve already been through.

1. The CMO Now has an Increased Role

While the Chief Marketing Officer has had a role in online marketing, social medial marketing, and print marketing for their companies over the past several years, the role has now increased. The marketing department is more important than ever and will be where many companies find the creativity to present their business to the masses to ensure they are found by customers.

Many times, the marketing department is the first place to lose any of its budget or funding. This is where the most successful companies are finding the need to invest and will realize they need to put their time and energy going forward. This is the first of the changing marketing trends created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Marketing With a Purpose Matters

More consumers than ever before are looking for the companies they spend their money with to align with them in many ways. The 2020 calendar year brought us four major crises, most of which overlapped each other. Whether a company publicly aligns with stamping out racial divides, works toward environmental improvement, offers savings to customers, or creates a safe space for a customer to buy products, these are part of the marketing expectation.

Purpose-driven marketing is one of the greatest trends and it allows consumers to feel they are supporting a company that supports their own beliefs and views. Review the message your company is sharing and make sure it’s in concert with your target customer base.

3. Altering the Marketing Process

The process by which a company reaches you and shares its message with you is beginning to grow. When the pandemic hit, nearly every ad you saw was either one that had been shown before or was a sad track with canned information. The flexibility of online chat rooms and media collaboration is making it easier for companies to offer better marketing during this second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the greatest marketing trends of the current wave is to offer marketing we’ve seen before in a way that shows that it was filmed and created in a safe space. Being flexible and dynamic is extremely important during this process.

4. The Growth of E-Commerce is a Serious Marketing Trend

It should come as no surprise that at a time when more products and services are being paid for online, e-commerce platforms would show serious growth. Including e-commerce into industries that wouldn’t have had it in the past (for example, the automotive industry) has become a successful test run and shown that e-commerce is important for the future.

Adding an e-commerce aspect to a website to allow customers to purchase products or pay for services has never been as important as it is now. Today, you can have a completely zero-contact experience with a company and pay for what you need with their payment options.

5. Brand Focus Takes a Turn

To feel comfortable working with a company, you expect that company to offer a sanitized and clean facility, if you’re going to visit them in person, or an online experience that’s similar to what you find at their place of business. Many brands have made the change to ensure your comfort with their cleanliness. During COVID-19 items including fully sanitized hotel rooms and booked shopping times are part of what we’ve seen.

How can your brand focus on the cleanliness and ensure the safety and comfort of customers? This is the challenge that’s become one of the most important marketing trends of the COVID-19 pandemic.