To say that 2020 scored a full 9 on the Richter scale, would be an understatement. Life as we knew went rogue on us and the new normal became sifting sand under our feet; changing constantly and if we could not keep up with it, was sure to pull us under.

The pandemic challenged us mercilessly; whether it was our mental health or our purchasing behavior, nothing was the same anymore. Global marketing strategies as we knew them for decades, had become redundant overnight, and marketers were forced to unlearn everything they knew that worked for their customers! Gone were the tried and tested theses that held true for a long time. New groups formed. As consumers, we naturally have a tendency to gravitate toward people with similar interests, but what happens when in the blink of an eye, consumer interests change dramatically?

Over centuries, humans evolved to form societies; these are simply the fabric of our social ecosystem, our circles of trust and our pods. In pandemic times, pods have taken on a whole new meaning. Cohorting of individuals, now has new meaning and understanding. Without a warning, our lifestyles changed and in doing so, we changed our behaviour inorganically and forcefully. Experimentation took on a whole different scale. For many, it was an end of the old ways, but for a marketer this is the beginning of a new thought process! A good marketer constantly builds upon changing consumer behaviour, and in this oddly interesting time, we are all going through pretty much the same changes in our lives as well. Our schedules and customary ideologies have scallywagged on us.

As marketers we have a core group of loyalists within our set of customers. These loyalists are the nuclei of what the brand is all about and they create profit centers that drive the greatest long term value for our business. While it is integral to recognize the insurmountable need to prioritize loyalists (read, profit center in last sentence) to create leverage for a business, they more often than not, don’t always accurately represent the larger population and aggregate customer perceptions. So, it is not only important, but also necessary, to have a macro vision in how we think about adapting for most, instead of changing for only for the top percentiles.

Old school marketers (pre-COVID), mostly cohorted customers based on their buying patterns – what they bought, when they bought and which channels they leveraged to engage with the brand. How much of that now holds weight in post-COVID times? Thinking about conventional ways of doing business is not only appealing, but sadly also oddly comforting for many teams and executives. However, present times have made us all aware to not focus our attention on outdated, rinse and repeat techniques that have outlived their time, but to continually evolve our thinking as marketers and digital natives. Modifying and updating cohorting patterns are new glue that will hold your marketing strategy together. Let’s simplify and break down the steps to help think us think through how to cohort and experiment:

1. Envisioning The Future Business Model – How will your company choose to ride the post pandemic wave? Will you offer the same level of service to the same customer in the future? So much has changed drastically, and does loyalty hold the same meaning as it did in the past? Does your business live in the intercept between the commute to/from a work place without all the commuting? Unfortunately, in reality there is no Zoltar or a crystal ball to predict the future. The only thing as marketers that will hold you in good stead is, meticulous effort and an openness to, listen to the customer, understand them & taking steadfast action.

2. Conceptualizing The Cohorts – The key to conceptualizing is to be of a receptive bent of mind and have the willingness to create the new frameworks. Thinking out of the box is now an accepted way of life. Sudden lifestyle changes, call for effective and creative cohorting. The same shoe doesn’t fit everyone and nor will the same formula be applicable to all organizations. Wear your thinking hat and reimagine your customer; the same one, but so new! Ask pertinent questions like – are your old ways in which customers were grouped based on demographics and/or buying behaviour, relevant today? Are your customer insights and analytics pre-2020 relevant anymore? As marketers, we know “Recency” is the biggest prognosticator for future behaviour. Think about all the characteristics that your customers might now display, organize and rank them before moving full throttle to creating new groups. When it comes to conceptualizing, the canvas is vast and blank to customize for your needs!

3. Experimenting – Ideation and data gathering is fairly easy, but the real challenge lies in experimenting with the right solutions; that perfect umami of creating an emotion and the ability to influence the consumer through that. To hold meaning, we need to create experiments with the potential to have radical and fundamentally broad-reaching consequences for the customer. This should be the least time consuming of the three steps. Albert Einstein once said “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. This makes the solution more yielding and potentially effective. Build a series of theses, sequence them based on highest impact, and keep acting on it repeatedly (firing bullet after bullet), to understand how it impacts and influences customers.

The pandemic has taught us many lessons; about reinventing, renewing, changing and most importantly, about not conforming to traditional approaches. What might seem tangential behavior, is now considered the new normal. If there was ever a right time, it is now, to rebuild your approach toward all customers, loyalists and generalists. As marketers, you will do your business a world of good if you avoid rigid conformity and be comfortable being uncomfortable.