Nearly all business organizations will be reviewing their budgets in light of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, digital marketing projects are naturally a soft target for businesses looking to make cuts.
“Ensure your business is ready to do business.”
There is certainly a need to work smarter under the current circumstances, however it’s a crucial time in marketing to adopt strategies for your businesses long-term profitability and making hasty decisions can cost your business in the long run.
Here’s 3 ways your business can adapt its digital marketing strategy during these time:
1. Efficiently Manage Your PPC Budget
I’ve seen e-mails and posts recently around turning off PPC campaigns entirely, one of the primary drivers of new business for many companies. This approach could be hugely damaging.
Instead, look to manage efficiencies across accounts where possible.
- Look at cutting back on any unnecessary upper-funnel keywords with lower conversion rates where search-demand may be waning.
- Save your budget for keywords with a higher likelihood of generating conversions.
To simply pause your PPC campaign and then start it again will also mean higher CPCs (Cost-Per-Click) as campaigns will have to go back through an initial learning phase.
At the moment your CPCs will likely be lower as many competitors scale back, so for those businesses who can continue to function should capitalize on this.
There’s also the consideration of longer-term impacts.
Your campaign Quality Score is based on your CTR (Click-Thru-Rate) relative to others in the PPC auction.
If other businesses stop their campaigns, you can make CTR gains which in the long term will improve your Quality Score and lower your CPCs. The reverse is also true.
Businesses should be aware that they can’t just switch on and off PPC campaigns and resume them like nothing ever happened. It doesn’t work that way.
2. Keep Your Organic Visibility
When it comes to organic activity, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is clearly a longer-term strategy and the tap can’t (and shouldn’t) be switched off as with PPC.
You can bet that Google will be tweaking their algorithms now more than ever to ensure that the searchers get the most accurate information, so to ignore the basics would risk reducing your organic visibility in the long term.
Organic search is one of the most viable channels in any scenario and especially during this. Remember that people will always be searching, perhaps more now than ever before.
E-Commerce businesses and lead generation websites are in a better position than any to continue to do business in what is a difficult period for many.
3. Leverage Your Social Media Channels To Be Helpful
There’s a huge increase of people logging in to and spending time on social platforms as professionals start to adapt to the working from home lifestyle.
Right now is a great time to re-imagine your social media strategy, or if you don’t have one, it’s a great time to start.
Below are some general tips for businesses looking to revamp their social strategy and messaging based on current trends.
- Provide Help: Give customers credible, detailed information about the things they need. Be objective and clear. Reinforce “we are here to help you.”
- Create communities among customers and help people connect, both locally and globally.
- Be present in the early hours of the morning or late hours of the evening: Our habits are evolving and it’s important to let consumers know that your business is available whenever, wherever.
- Look for people who are helping and find ways to support or celebrate them. They might be your employees, people who use your product or services, or people who could use support.
- Find ways to enrich people’s lives as we isolate and combat both boredom and anxiety.
Even though we all may be feeling isolated, the next few weeks gives your businesses an opportunity to be even more social and more community-led. It also lets your business become a center of happiness during this period of unknowns.
Get Ready To Emerge
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to your digital strategy. All businesses operate differently. But one thing is for certain, it’s that you must ensure your business is ready to do business the day consumer confidence starts to increase. This will enable you to avoid a long-term impact on your market share.
We’re here to help at anytime. Reach out to us at (951) 200-4252 or (800) 505-7570 and we’d be happy to help!
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