The Study of Natural Material Crafts MSMEs in Optimizing Digital Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The corona virus pandemic has tremendous impacts on MSMEs creative industry in general and natural material craft.  The decline in local, national, and international market demand, cancellation of orders, purchasing power decline of the people and restrictions on mobility in tourism areas have had tremendous impacts. The flexibility and pliability of the handicraft industry players were again tested like previous economic crises. Although the current situation is more severe, the access for MSMEs of natural material craft industry is still open. Some adjustments must be made even better at the policy level, including the implementation of health protocols that must be expedited. These adjustments need to be realized immediately because they will accelerate the recovery phase which is projected to take place in the future. The ability to adapt and transform into a force for the future and the importance of understanding digital literacy and Iot is very important. Digital marketing literacy as an adaptation effort in less economy contact is a necessity, especially for natural material craft business actors to continue to survive in their creative and innovative works. This research was conducted by exploring literacy and implementing digital marketing both with secondary data and primary data in several areas of Central Java that have the potential for natural material handicraft businesses. In this article, we will look specifically at the city of Semarang. The results of the descriptive analysis show that the majority of natural material craft business actors in the city of Semarang already have good digital marketing literacy, but the ability of human resources is not evenly distributed in optimizing the benefits of digital marketing. There are still obstacles in some ways including the making of display designs in digital marketing in order to make them more attractive and the time limit in managing platforms that have been created, which become challenges in responding to the current situation to help MSMEs survive in the midst of the recent business situation. 

Keywords: Craft, Marketing Digital, Pandemic