Marketing for ‘New Normal’ Customer Behaviors


After enduring life-changing moments like an economic crisis coupled with a global pandemic, consumers will naturally change their priorities and interests, which in turn impacts how and what they spend money on. Because of this consumer shift in the “New Normal” of Covid-19, many companies are forced to develop new customer engagement strategies.

These evolving patterns present a challenge for marketers to identify instances to keep opportunities alive with personalized customer messaging. Some of the typical questions marketing departments should ask are:

  • How should I adjust the segmentation of my customers?
  • What is the lifetime value of my customer now?
  • What is the best approach to reinvesting in my customers?
  • How should I market to customers without being insensitive?

To answer these questions, you will need to reevaluate all your customers and redefine their personas. To do this, it is important to understand the impact of the recession on people’s lifestyles, behaviors and spending.

Defining New Customer Segments

First, monitor your customer base and how it’s reacting daily to news, stories and social media. You can gauge these reactions and score them along with publicly available information about income and unemployment by geographic location to reinforce your model. This monitoring can provide clear sentimental and financial metrics to update the customer lifetime value.

Once you understand your target customers’ interests, concerns and actions, you can create distinct personas and evaluate the right amount to invest in each category to generate an ROI. You should base segments on lifestyle, income bracket, health concerns, emotions and social distancing mandates and market to them accordingly.

A customer in the New Normal can be categorized based on behavior traits and lifestyle segments:

By segmenting customers with common attributes and leveraging those segments as variables in a marketing recommendation engine, marketers can get recommendations on offer types, targeted messages and potential response rates by customers within location, age and worth.

Read the full article on Forbes.com

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