Effects of COVID-19 on Digital Marketing and how to prepare your Digital Marketing Plans in this situation!
According to the WHO, the Coronavirus is now officially a pandemic.
Its destructive impact is being felt across the global economy, as companies try to operate under increasingly difficult conditions and measure how long the outbreak will last.
And now, Coronavirus has also made its path in the digital ecosystem. Let’s discuss how coronavirus is affecting the digital Marketing:
- Doubts around ad spend.
The decline in the availability of goods may lead to senior management holding back their advertising dollars. If fewer goods make it to market, companies will invest fewer bucks in the advertising industry.
Naturally, seeing the dollars being wasted on ads, the ad executives will pull back from investing in ads.
Moreover, analysts are also making guesses that the coronavirus will be resolved by around June, which is why they have forecasted that ad spend will be down in the first half of the year, but have not changed assumptions for the second half of 2020.
Needham (the independent investment banking and asset management firm) analysts have lowered their estimates for Facebook’s ads business in the first six months of the year.
The New York Times has also reported a slowdown in its advertising business due to doubts around coronavirus.
Predicting the impact of Coronavirus on search engines and digital marketing is rather challenging. Some people argue that search activity will continue unabated, because it’s a regular service.
However, if consumer or B2B demand decreases in some categories there will be fewer searches for those products or services (like: hotels, airlines). That will also affect SEO, paid-search and online display advertising. If sales aren’t occurring, marketers may redirect budgets or postpone spending.
Industries such as travel, hospitality, events and some trade categories are likely to see lower ad-spending levels through the first half of this year.
But there’s a strong argument that reduced online spending creates opportunities if competitors are not spending. In addition, digital marketing can be critical in a downturn to sustain demands.
2. Marketing events being cancelled or postponed.
Many marketing events have already started to be cancelled or postponed, and if the situation gets more difficult, there could be further withdrawal from events.
Advertising Week Europe, SXSW and Mobile World Congress events have already been cancelled. So does Adobe Summit (US). And last week, Facebook declared its F8 developer conference was no longer taking place.
In the case of Adobe Summit, the event will be conducted as an online event.
The impact of the virus is resulting in a shift towards webinars and other events being hosted online, as companies and institutions avoid large-scale crowds.
There is also likely to be more stress on association of content through digital channels and online lead generation, with advertisers and vendors still needing to get out their message and maintain a sales pipeline.
In response to rising insecurity around events; a business messaging app called Guild has set up the group CREO or Coronavirus Response for Event Organisers, a group for supporting anyone running an event within the next 6 months.
Due to COVID-19, many organizations, such governments, health organizations, schools, and more, are publishing urgent announcements that affect schedules and other aspects of everyday life. This includes the closure of facilities, rescheduling of events, and new availability of medical facilities (for example, testing centers).
You can find more details here ‘ How to implement your COVID-19 announcements’
How marketers are responding in this situation
1. Short-term adaptations
These days, 61% of marketers are changing their short-term media strategy. However, only 9% are making long-term decisions.
There is a minor move from offline media to online; as marketers in the same study made clear that they would take a more online approach.
This budget shift is not shocking considering that digital media is consumed at a higher rate due to the online lifestyle of the post-corona customer.
2. Moving to flexible channels
Marketers are observing that it’s in the best interest to move towards cheaper and flexible marketing channels like programmatic advertising where consumer presence and available impressions are growing.
Digital display ads, online video, and social media are channels that are also likely to increase in the short-term media plan.
Out-of-home advertising including metro billboards or posters will have much lower exposure as most of the people are staying at home. Event marketing has come to an immediate stop, and we’ll likely see that marketing budget close or shift towards online ads.
However, not everyone sees cutting marketing budgets as the only solution.
Some B2B brands are increasing digital advertising spend to balance for the leads they otherwise would have picked up at events.
3. Long-term concern
A major concern is that no one really knows when the pandemic is over and everyone can go back to their daily lives.
We can clearly see how spending is decreasing in certain industries such as the travel sector, retail, or events, however, many on-demand online services will likely increase their advertising spend — specially in online channels.
Services such as online food delivery services, streaming or online news outlets are profiting from the higher online presence and will want to take a larger market share in a larger market and increase spend.
How you can prepare your marketing strategy in this situation 1. Work smart to hold your existing customer base
Don’t forget to keep in touch with your existing customers otherwise you will lose them. It is much simpler and cheaper to regain your existing customers than gaining new ones.
Online marketing is the best way to be in touch with your customers because of its low cost and easy communication. You need to remember this to not send automated email marketing spam or broadcast cold calling messages to new customers. Focus on sending personalised, contextualised, targeted messages to existing customers instead of gaining new customers at this time.
You need to be keeping in touch with your consumers at every touch point in their digital journey through social media channels.
Content production is an important element for your strategic marketing campaigns and for keeping in touch with your existing customers. Share the innovations that you are currently making that distinguish your offers from your competitors, and promote your good news stories to win more clients.
Start engaging with your existing customers on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. These are the platforms where buyers usually give reviews about the products, discuss their purchasing experience and exchange views about the company.
Create a strategic plan for connecting with customers at every point in the social media funnel. Use these tools to listen to your customers and hear what they’re discussing. In the end, it isn’t about advertising, your efforts to the conversation need to be valuable and appropriate.
2. Get even more visible in front of your clients
Brand awareness is most important to get more visibility in the market. It helps in driving visitors to your site to generate sales.
And one of the best times to get found by potential clients is when they’re searching for what you’re offering in the market. You need to get found at every stage of the purchasing lifecycle, from searching new suppliers to calculating specific offerings.
This is the best time to explore low cost techniques that will keep your brand observable in front of potential clients on a steady basis. It may feel contradictory, but setting aside an advertising budget for keeping your brand visible will deliver long term profits.
Focus on creating high quality content. Your business should archive relevant and interesting content that does not become dated and add value to your customers and the search engines.
3. Focus on creating meaningful conversions
Post positive and good stories about your company. Examine your case studies, reviews, and recommendations and utilize this time to thoroughly improve your content.
We all know customer experience is most important. Invest in your website to make sure you are giving a swift and personalised experience to your customers. And in terms of keeping costs down, remember that small changes on your website will have a good impact on the final outcome.
Also, now is the perfect time to learn the latest developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence. It will give your business competitive benefits and provide a path to the right potential customers at the right time.
4. Measure, measure, measure
Measuring is also very important to manage things around. And if you are not managing, you are wasting your money.
Measuring means responsibility for your marketing expenditure. You need to measure sales, numbers of lead generated, and referrals. Now is the time to make sure you have defined your key performance indicators.
Check your Google Analytics precisely. Make sure you are using all the data to derive your marketing efficiencies. Do you have goals set up accurately? Have you defined what you are measuring? Just measure everything.
Also, measure your social media ROI. When you don’t have enough budgets, you need to smartly think on how you are going to spend your resources.
Social media can sometimes be very time consuming and an optional unnecessary activity. But before making that decision, ensure you have explored how social media is helping your bottom line in terms of engagement, visibility, and success.
5. Test, discover, test
And finally, you will need to be quick and creative.
Evaluate your success, and learn from the experiment. Here are some good tips:
- Experiments should be fast, inexpensive and easy to carry.
- If it works, then it’s good. Do more of it.
- And if it doesn’t work then stop the experiment and move on. No harm done. You will have tested something, learned your lesson from it, now moving on and testing something new.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the coronavirus has left its mark in history — the question is how you will cope up in this situation.
We have now seen the effects on various industries and marketing efforts. So, more digital solutions need to be measured for all industries. Webinars, digital leisure’s and virtual doctor visits are examples of solutions to come when physical contact is limited.
Even during a time that feels like a downward path — there can be an opportunity to be seized.
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