We live in a very strange times. Most business barely try to keep their heads above water, but unfortunately some had to close their doors. Not all business like mask manufacturers, food delivery companies, Zoom, and others, are lucky enough to continue their work without thinking on variety of ways to reinvent in order to keep business as usually.
In this article, we will share 3 marketing strategies during COVID-19, what you and your business might want to apply and see the results.
But for starters you need to answer 4 important questions:
- How the demand structure in these channels is changing,
- How to work with them now,
- Whether marketing can be paused without affecting the company,
- Which marketing strategies are best to choose, even if there’s a shortage of money.
PPC marketing
The trend in the PPC is as follows due to the decline in demand in general, we can see a decrease in demand in search, and search advertising subsidies in particular. Previously, PPC search and product advertising was the main source of sales. People were looking for something in search, saw ads, and bought.
But nowadays, the trend returns a little, if you look at last month’s stats, banner ads and videos have become the main source of traffic from advertising. This is due to the fact that people are using streaming services, watching movies, TV series, courses, and there are banner ads everywhere.
If we talk about conversions, then again, in most cases there is a fell. I would even say that the conversion has not fallen, but lengthened. In the past, a person coming from an advertisement would buy a simple product at once, and a more complicated product in a few clicks.
Now, this funnel has lengthened. It became even more important to work with email, chatbots, maintain communication with other advertising channels.
If in some areas the decision-making period was three-to-four days, it could grow to two-to-three weeks. I assume that this is due to the decrease in purchasing power because many people are on vacation or without work. Those who have money are not in a hurry to spend it, because it is not clear what will happen tomorrow. Even those who have an intention to buy something started to buy less.
Messenger marketing
Being in a situation of forced closure, some businesses could not afford to keep their marketing budget at the same level. Accordingly, some suspended the work with messengers, as with any other channels generating leads. The reason was not even that the companies had no money left. But also the fact that there is nothing to sell and no one to sell due to quarantine if the business is related to offline services.
Is it worth stopping the activities in messengers at all, if the company is very tight with money? If not, then how to reduce budgets for this channel with minimal damage?
The work with messengers is divided into several categories. In terms of generating leads, traffic, and conversion, it is the same as in targeted advertising and other lead gen channels. If the business closes, it makes no sense to generate hot leads.
But the messengers themselves can be used in many different ways. For example, the funnel does not have to sell quickly. It can be long and work for involvement, heating, work not only with potential clients but also with existing ones. It makes sense to maintain such a funnel whether the business is working now or not. When the company opens its doors again, it will be able to sell to the same people – no one has forgotten about them, they have been communicating and maintaining relationships throughout this period – it is important.
SMM
It’s bad for those who are affected by an offline fall. If offline is closed, the whole company has stopped working, and SMM too. For example, they somehow manage the account themselves, hey only have enough strength or some content activity. And advertising – nobody simply comes to them, and they cannot work, and they do not maintain advertising.
Those who are forbidden to work, and who can not accept clients in the office, reduced to almost zero advertising in social networks and other sources. And someone, on the contrary, increased, like VR clubs. They launched a new service – previously there was an offline point, which is now closed, and the equipment is idle. They’ve set up a rental service and are actively developing it.
But the main questions you are probably asking yourself is: is it possible to save money on social networking?
In general, it is better not to reduce the number of posts, and make them better in quality. If the budget for advertising has decreased, then focus on the content.
SMM is less about direct sales and more about building a link between user and brand, and content plays a primary role in this. If you loose content, the connection is broken.
In paid promotion it is possible to save on what does not bring results right now it can be reduced. In terms of conversions now everything should be actively connected to analytics. You look through the analytics does the campaign bring you additional conversions after the transition and application. If the results are down dramatically, you should turn it off.
And the content takes a little time, especially if the company initially approached it correctly – there is a content strategy, a content plan, and so on. If it’s all there, there’s nothing stopping you from giving it all to one employee who’s sitting at home at a remote location to write according to a ready-made plan. If there is a strategy, there is nothing difficult about continuing to write, and it is not so expensive.
If you want to know more about which strategy can work best for your business, feel free to contact us for FREE Consultation.