Savvy Business Leaders Focus Their Marketing on What Matters Most to Their Customers

Tim Riester

The pandemic of 2020 had differing effects on various industries. Many businesses in tourism and live entertainment came to a screeching halt, while others such as healthcare, financial services and certain consumer products — like furniture and groceries — flourished. In either case, savvy business leaders learned to change on a moment’s notice and focus on what mattered most to their customers. 

In the tourism and live entertainment industries, marketing messages initially focused primarily on safety. However, there is a clear shift happening to include only a nod to safety as a secondary message as more people become vaccinated and begin planning, booking and enjoying their outings. Some large tourism destinations have taken the opportunity to smartly convert the safety of ourselves to safely protecting the natural beauty of our planet and what is special about their tourism destinations. This message will become increasingly appealing to travelers as values and principles become the currency of success in society. 

Messaging is encouraging travelers to be more responsible and respectful in their behavior — to enjoy outdoor places but remain conscious of their choices once they begin to explore again. That’s the approach of RIESTER’s summer campaign for Park City, Utah. Called “On the Right Trail,” the destination marketing campaign takes advantage of the natural beauty of Park City’s vast open spaces and charm of its historic town to position the surrounding community as an ideal destination for safe and active family vacations. The area’s tourism bureau, Visit Park City, is doing an excellent job of focusing on protecting its community and the environment from the inevitable impact of returning tourists.

Although many financial services and consumer products businesses have excelled during 2020 and the first half of 2021, they have an opportunity to secure their position of consumer preference. These businesses should connect themselves to the community and build an emotional bond with consumers that garners loyalty. This is the purpose of RIESTER’s “True to Your Money” campaign for MidFirst Bank. By featuring admirable characteristics of business owners and craftsmen and -women, MidFirst Bank is articulating its higher commitment to the people and communities it serves.

As vaccines continue to be distributed and booster shots become necessary, people will become more comfortable gathering, yet public health will remain top of mind for an extended period of time. As a result, health-related businesses should capitalize on this momentum and use it to promote their role in contributing to healthier lifestyles and communities. That is why in time for this past 4th of July holiday, RIESTER launched a new, national burn helpline for its health self-care client Quest Products, Inc. and its Alocane Emergency Burn Gel, a product that treats everything from common sunburns to cooking burns and is used in hospitals for more severe injuries.

As Internet privacy issues continue to change the way marketers advertise, first-party data is going to become more and more valuable to all businesses. Attracting first-time visitors to a business’s website and capturing data will be the key to gaining a competitive edge. First-time visitors are looking to compare a business or product against the competitive set, so it’s important to make sure businesses invest in a robust content publishing schedule that will grow its website content and give people a reason to visit again. Linking videos and embedding them in YouTube will help the business appear in first-time visitors’ personal feeds. Using click path analysis, sophisticated CRM and personalization will help ensure each audience group is catered to on future visits to the business’s website and allow it to curate emails that speak directly to the consumers’ preferences.

RIESTER is one of the largest independently owned digital marketing companies in the western United States. RIESTER was listed among Forbes’ “Top 100 Global Ad Agencies that Know Social Media and Google” and Advertising Age magazine’s “20 Hottest Creative Shops to Watch in America.” PRWeek awarded RIESTER “Campaign of the Year – Public Sector” for the United States in 2019. 

This is one segment of the August 2021 cover story “Coming Back: How Marketing Will Build (Back) Business after COVID-19.”

Click here to check out the other 10 businesses and the cover designs they submitted for the Cover Story Cover Contest (winner was featured as the actual magazine cover).