Marketing forecasts, sectors that will continue to produce profits, that will not stop, that will recover faster, knowing it can help you orient your business or convert your production to other markets.

Let's do a study with simple words and try to deepen some aspects that offer us a solution to stay up after the "catastrophe", if there will be, if there won't be so much better.

One of the tasks of marketing experts and consultants, in order to find customers for their customers, or to keep their growth prospects high, is also, during a crisis, to make forecasts, to venture market hypotheses, based on experience, research and database analysis.

This work can be done on a large scale, for small sectors, for customers of all sizes, no matter for whom or what, apart from the size of the job, the process is more or less the same.

In this sense I will try to provide some market insights for what is already possible to predict and according to my analysis, all syndicated, but it will be a milestone to deal with later and understand if this "science" has an important value and predictive for a customer who turns to the marketer.

A plausible time limit, at a pandemic end, is expected around May 2020. We may agree or not, but according to accurate estimates we can think of fixing the temporal end of the pandemic in Italy at that time.

Making a further estimate on the times, we say that between one thing and another in June there will be a start-up for those who will be ready to start again. Many realities will wake up numb from lethargy and severely weakened economically, but still standing and will try to pick up where they left off.

Here is the first negative impact. They will not be able to restart, how long will they take? Is their market still receptive? Does the question pick up immediately, or will it delay? Is the business model still valid? Are changes in purchasing habits ready for me?

Some empirical values ​​dictated by the research could be wrong or not precise, shared or not, however they decree a starting point on which to start making reasonings and if we have them within a table, as we go ahead and discover data more certain, we can modify them by offering a more accurate updated estimate that changes dynamically as conditions change, always offering an adequate solution to the economic response requested by the customer.

Now let's define some negative aspects:

Many very small, small and medium-sized industrial and commercial enterprises will no longer reopen

Many entrepreneurial realities will have a considerable amount of employees in layoffs

The general purchasing power will be cut by approximately 50%

Internal requests and orders will have dropped dramatically especially in some sectors

Demand from abroad will also be severely reduced

The credit will be small or absent

Many payments between suppliers will be requested in advance

Some prices may rise on raw materials or on particular or strategic products

Now let's try to think which sectors could not suffer penalties, or could restart faster or even have an economic improvement. If my client's business is compliant with these sectors we can strengthen it through the acquisition of customers belonging to them, if it is not similar to these sectors, we must find a way to bring it closer to guaranteeing sufficient cash flow for structural maintenance and a quick start after the pandemic.

I give an example:

Insurance sector. The forecasts say that it will hold, as despite many losses due to company closings or divestments in the associated financial sector, they will keep auto policies and it is plausible an increase in the public and private health insurance sector, of security policies (increase of micro crime expected for the second half of this year) and also for life insurance and supplementary pensions.

If this prediction is true, we can say that this sector will restart quickly and perhaps even increase. I check if my client has services or products to supply to this sector. If you have them, I define a line of economic growth, I immediately prepare and execute a branding, awareness and proposal marketing plan that keeps potential customers "warm" by bringing them closer to my client's company and brand. As soon as we have the hint of restart, based on the analysis models, we start with a lead generation campaign.

If my client does not have the opportunity to serve this sector, we try to understand if there is a possibility by expanding to contiguous markets, changing the business model or converting a part of the company itself to be able to "attack" them and we create a project of marketing to initialize it to the new market.

The goal is this: to ensure a good customer base of companies already ready to restart with a non-penalized business to sell their services or products to, and do it immediately.

Another example that we can imagine is a very strong increase in the public health sector, due to the strong controversy and sensitivity that occurred during the pandemic. If the public health model is heavily strengthened, it could be plausible that current private health sectors are being weakened, and being a highly competitive market, a customer in this sector who would turn to me, I would propose a repositioning and conversion of some health services he supervises. For example, I would suggest strengthening the private health sectors par excellence: orthodontics, dentistry and prosthetics, cosmetic surgery, others that will remain the preserve of private health companies. For this reason, starting to manage them faster and more strongly is an obligation, I would immediately start a very strong medium-long term marketing plan, also with the creation of sub-brands for a better communication impact and positioning and effectiveness to try to cover 100%. % all potential audience. We certainly know that the purchasing power will drop, for this group of customers we can imagine that it will shrink to the one with a better social status, the wealthiest to be clear, so sharing this slice of the market will be harder, if they anticipate competitors could be the right solution to recover quickly by expanding and improving the offer in these strategic sectors.

In this document I cannot expose all the cases, but in smart working, in the digital sector, in the gaming sector and others there will be strong possibilities for expansion.

In the industrial, commercial, food, tourism sectors etc. The cases are the most disparate, you have to analyze them on a case by case basis, but I already know, for example, that you have to "attack" the contiguous markets and widen your potential customers to the maximum in order to attempt a good restart.

To conclude this short article, it is essential NOW to think about what to do after the end of the pandemic and act with plans and strategies from now on in order to be ready for the starting blocks. If you do nothing or hope for a return to pre-crisis normalcy, you will make irreversible errors.

Antonio Di Chiano