How to Modify Your Marketing Strategy to Survive COVID-19
A step by step guide with statistics
Now more than ever, you should be making efforts to ensure your business is visible to potential customers. You need cash flow from sales to break even and ensure your business survives.
Your digital marketing efforts deserve a good financial investment right now, and the numbers prove it.
- In March, internet usage rose by 70% due to lockdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 49% of shoppers have gone online to shop, with grocery shopping leading the queue.
Why start now?
- More than half of businesses are slowing down or putting off their marketing efforts in response to the pandemic. This could be your chance to start and beat your competitors in the game.
- Your budget should not matter as much as your ability to spend that money wisely.
- The later you start, the later it will take for you to reap the benefits!
From this guide, you will learn:
- The latest numbers to help inform your digital marketing efforts.
- Metrics to help you gauge the effectiveness of your current marketing efforts.
- Tactics you can implement now to get ahead of your marketing game.
Read on!
Follow the trends to implement successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns
- The use of search has increased, with customers seeking for solutions to COVID-19 issues. 73% of consumers are now visiting their social media pages daily, and 96% no longer mind seeing adverts.
- Google has also stated a few ways in which search behavior has changed. A few pointers that businesses now need to focus on include:
– Providing clear ways of delivering goods and services, including home delivery.
– Finding ways for your brand to foster shared virtual experiences, for example, “virtual happy hours” and “with me” videos such as “disinfect with me” are hot cake at the moment.
– Creating lots of content that promotes wellness.
– Identifying COVID-19 heroes and celebrating them.
- Industries that are thriving during this period and experiencing numerous searches are:
– Online grocery shopping, with spending increasing from 4% to 15%. Retailers are actually grappling with excess demand.
– Meditation apps as people prefer to relax in groups. Downloads of these apps saw a 25% increase in late March.
– Online learning courses as people seek to gain or better their skills and stay busy, with the search for online courses increasing by 204%.
– Fitness equipment sales have grown by 170%.
Such data on shifts in preferences can help you stay ahead with your SEO strategy.
What does this mean for your business?
- Check the keywords you are ranking for using tools such as MOZ and SEMrush. For lower ranking keywords, incorporate the ideas in 1(b) into your content strategy and monitor the results.
- Keep track of your competitors to identify gaps that you can capitalize on.
- Optimize your product or service pages that are most likely to be of utmost interest to customers during this period.
- Google AdWords are cheaper and experiencing more ROI than before
- Since fewer businesses are advertising online, paid ads have become cheaper. PPC ads also seeing more click-through and conversion rates.
ROI on paid ads before and after COVID-19: Image Neil Patel
- According to Wordstream, below are the conversion rates in several industries:
– Pharmaceutical 47%
– Charities 23%
– Accounting 43%
– Spa care 41%
– Demand media 102%
– Floral arrangements 43%
- If you are a small business owner and you have had an active ad account in the last year, you are eligible to receive part of the $340 million that Google is offering in ad credits.
What steps should you take?
- Competition is lower, but demand isn’t! This is the time to spend some money on Google Ads and get more customers.
- Check out whether your competitors are still banking on previously expensive and competitive keywords. If not, use the opportunity to rank for those keywords.
- Take advantage of the entire Google Display Network (GDN). Instead of using Google Ads alone, place ads on YouTube, Google Finance, Blogger, and Gmail.
- Choose the campaigns that can convert best and focus your budget on those.
- Launch or increase your remarketing campaign to increase conversions.
- Social media advertising
- The Cost per Click (CPC) on Facebook ads has been dropping since the year began compared to 2019. In January, it dropped by 16%, 21% in February, and 27% in March.
Source: statista.com
- 73% of consumers are now visiting their social media pages daily.
- CPC has decreased by 33% in the retail food sector and 22% in ecommerce.
- Advertisers who are seeing a high CTR are, interestingly, most of those that use high-quality imagery. These include:
– Legal advertisers (1.61%)
– Retail (1.59%)
– Apparel (1.24%)
– Beauty (1.16%)
– Fitness (1.01%)
- Small businesses can now access Facebook grants and ad credits worth $100m. These grants are available in specific regions for 30,000 qualifying businesses.
- Facebook has also introduced Facebook shops, a free ecommerce platform where small businesses can set shop and sell directly on Facebook. In the future, the company plans to introduce Instagram shops and shops on its other platforms including Messenger and WhatsApp
What does this mean for your business?
- People are spending more time on social media, so it will pay to out up your ads there. Take advantage of the lower cost per click.
- Focus on advertising products that people care about during this period. Try not to sell hard. Instead, focus on showing your customers that you care for them, for example, by offering freebies and discounts.
- Use hashtags such as #keepsafe #workfromhome to get found.
- Think about how you can foster virtual interactions while marketing your products.
- Step up or launch your remarketing campaigns and also extend to lookalike audiences.
- Get more creative with your images and visuals.
- Spy on your competition using the Facebook Ad library. Find out how they are messaging their ads, the frequency of those ads compared to ho often they were putting up ads before. Can you make your ads stand out more than your competitors?
- Other marketing ideas to consider
- To increase conversions, implement flexible payment options where customers pay over a period of time. You can create a payment plan.
- If you are a business offering online services, consider diversifying geographically. Think international SEO.
- Help selflessly
– 85% of consumers stated in a recent survey that they will be more loyal to brands moving forward, depending on based on they present themselves during the COVID-19 period.
– Anything that you can do to help out will also benefit you indirectly through increase traffic.
- Remarketing campaigns are everything right now. Reach out to those visitors who have already expressed interest and also find other matching audience to market to.
- Let your marketing campaign speak to the interests of people at this time. Think of how you can incorporate ideas such as keeping safe, keeping fit, saving money, upskilling, and virtual relations in your ads.