Nearly a year ago, we would have been discussing social media, digital marketing, and e-commerce as important and fast-pace moving trends affecting the business and organizations globally. However, today our discussions on these 3 topics are rather different. They seem to be the only way business and organization operate nowadays, trending courses of action in dynamic pace, leaving no room for slow adjustments.

The World has been going through a digital transformation era and customers have been spending most of their time online even before 2020. Even though these changes were accelerated by the Industry 4.0, as well as new generations in previous decade, 2020 will be marked as the ultimate year for digital transformation due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Now most of the people started using online for purchasing essentials items due to the pandemic situation. Businesses have been shifted mostly or completely online in terms of operations, sales, and communication. Education is altered online as well. Media companies press conferences and public events are fully shifted online. Hence organization needs to have dynamic strategies including marketing strategies to address these sudden shifts and reflect the digital transformation accordingly.

Digital marketing is therefore to embarking a broader meaning following this pandemic. Apart from strategies which are related internet, social media, e-mail, digital boards, mobile apps, virtual reality, and data driven marketing and content, the use of Machine Learning and Deep Learning models in prediction consumers behaviors, buying patterns, loyalty, and retention are becoming increasingly important.

This e-book “COVID-19 – Reshaping Marketing and Communications” assembles five chapters discussing Digital Marketing strategic role in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, all from different angle and perspective: IMC for eco-tours, the complexity of the relations SME and social media, the fundamental meaning of digital marketing strategies for companies adopting new technologies, machine learning and AI in times of pandemic, and cause-marketing communications.

This e-book is highly recommended for professionals, researchers, marketing experts and professors. It underlines essential points, as lessons we learn in these unprecedented times, thriving to adopt and win this crisis. It is inevitable process, the digital transformation, and thus is the digital marketing centric communication. Hence, this e-book, is to take the readers through a new cycle, a much more fluid and iterative process of communicating and operating during and after the pandemic. This much needed findings enclosed in the e-book chapters are given by a diverse group of international scholars and authors who succeed to move the conversation to a different, more narrowed level, offering finding, models, and data for the industry of Marketing Communications.

Indeed, the admirable work by the authors of this e-book can serve as a guideline for adopting IMC strategies in post COVID era, but also as a foundation for future research and projects in the field of Digital Marketing, Strategy and Communications.