Amid the COVID 19 pandemic we are experiencing right now, let us now examine the digital marketing course soon. Can digital marketing efforts survive in these trying times?
The Course of Digital Marketing
The good thing about digital marketing is that you don’t have a “face-to-face” conversation with your client. Thus, this is an example of “social distancing practices” that are being implemented right now.
Digital marketers know ROI. In short, their activities produce top-notch quality marketing leads in the whole digital marketing course.
If you are not still aware of some digital marketing events happening right now online, let’s now see how the leading brands in the digital media industries perform during this crisis.
What is happening?
Cruise and airline industries are either closed, have reduced working hours, or have controlled their advertising campaigns because of COVID 19. It doesn’t make sense to advertise products that are not useful in the current time. It doesn’t make sense to advertise products that are not useful in the current time, unlike peptide therapy and healthy diet initiatives which can still be relevant.
Quarantine is in effect in almost all countries. This simply means that going outside is heavily discouraged. Any physical shop wouldn’t advertise something that people can’t get.
While some industries will crash, those who are in the pharma, healthcare, food and personal care industries will thrive. We see an improvement for e-commerce, especially for CPG; however, this would greatly affect digital marketers as they will struggle to compete for purchases of those who don’t usually buy things from the internet. All logistics and supply chain will be having a very hard time as the delivery windows are being minimized from pre-deliveries to four to seven-day delays. In other cases, most of the new releases for entertainment or new product lines will have to wait until this COVID 19 pandemic is over.
With many TV and trade shows that stopped producing their contents. People who produce these shows are diverting their time plugging in digital media for entertainment.
Work from home policies is being implemented around the world to curve the drastic increase of COVID 19 patients. This strategy forces companies to invest more in automation and/or e-learning platform subscriptions to project management tools such as Zoom, Slack, Skype, Trello, etc.
Remote work policies are fueling investments in work-flow automation or project management tools such as Slack and Trello, or e-learning platforms and telecommuting tools such as Zoom, Skype, etc. As bad it may look people in this time of crisis look towards their leaders and organizations to get guidance, reassurance, and information. Besides, they also trust the top brands and make them their primary sources of their information.
As Eimear Lambe and Alex Josephson of Twitter Next said “this is not a ‘marketing opportunity’ to capitalize on, and we do not recommend brands opportunistically linking themselves to a health scare.”
Hard times create highlight gaps. After all, most people around the world are quarantined and are spending their time online. For many digital marketers, this is a huge opportunity.
Some Businesses May Struggle
All businesses today will have to struggle in these desperate times. Even when we see that the recoveries of COVID 19 patients around the world are rising, businesses may still find it hard to come up with their losses for up to a year.
The best example is from China, where this crisis started. Retails sales have drop by 20.5% and the unemployment rate rose to 6.2 in February.
(China Manufacturing & retail Contracts) gna
One of the most affected companies is Apple. Their company closed most of their stores worldwide because of quarantine. This simply means that their stores did not generate income which could be a big help to the company. Sure, big companies like them can still pay their employees when they implement temporary shutdowns. But smaller companies can’t afford to pay their employees, let alone those who are “work-for-meal” ones.
If we talk about travel industry, a certain company said that they would lose 820 billion dollars. And Virgin Galactic just announced that their employees will take an eight-week leave. Not only are companies losing traffic and conversions; they are also losing money. In almost all industries, organic traffic is down.
Don’t Trust Your Analytics
First of all, let us not only consider one country, but we should also look at traffic stats all around the world. We should not also include data from websites that usually don’t have 5000 visitors per month as it will be bothersome and will create problems in the long run.
We also shouldn’t include data from each industry, as there are thousands of industries in the world. We will just get information on famous and important ones.
Now, if you are working on the Information Technology sector, we all saw last week the drastic drop in organic traffic for some major industries.
Minimized Paid Searches in Social Media Platforms
Search demand is down during this COVID 19 crisis. If you are running a company that has been deemed as “essential”, it is best to pull back your paid search.
If you know your services or products are not important to people as of now, you know what to do. It will be fruitless because you are spending your money on a marketing campaign that will not give you high returns.
On the good side, the prices of stocks of most companies in the stick market are low right now. This may be due to a big chunk of budget for advertisements that have been cut. If your company offers “essential” services or sells products to people, it might be best to maximize your strategies in your advertisement campaign.
As the President of Elumynt, Jeff Snyder said to Nick LeRoy, head of ICF Next “As conversion rates, CPMs and CPCs are in flux, you will likely need to be more hands-on than usual. On the search side, if you are using Smart Bidding, consider switching to manual bidding, or at the very least reevaluate your Max CPC setting to account for changes in the landscape. On social, with more eyeballs at home, you may find you can significantly increase reach within your top-performing audiences. You should be prepared to adjust budget, buds and update your campaigns every day!
E-mail Efficiency
Emails are not just cheap; they are effective too. Amid this COVID 19 crisis, and while almost all people are quarantined, you can’t change the search demand, which can potentially result to the drop of paid searches and paid media. The best way to market your products or services at these times is to maximize your email strategy.
Just by reminding your customers through email even if your physical store is closed that they can still get what they need online is already a good strategy.
Always take the serious approach of assuring your customers that your company is always willing to help in this COVID 19 crisis. Remember, this pandemic is a serious matter; your company might have a bad image if you take this opportunity to create “COVID 19 Special Deals” or promos.
A Klaviyos content strategist, Alex McPeak, wrote a perfect post about these “Deals and Promos". When you are thinking of promo codes, you have to represent your brand wisely. Do not use something in the name of the virus as it is a sensitive matter during this crisis.
Email might not be the best way to help with your losses during this COVID 19 pandemic, but they may show that you still value your customers’ trust and reassure them that you have sympathy.
SEO and Digital Marketing
Companies and organizations everywhere are having performance losses like paid search in organic traffic because all these are dependent on the global search demand. Unlike paid search, SEO and digital marketing teams are thriving.
Most website performances have dropped during this pandemic for the reason that most of them have flat keyword rankings. Google Console can also show you the drastic drop of search impressions, even while their rankings are still in place. We can say that the current COVID 19 crisis is the reason for the drop in search demands and is not an SEO/ranking issue.
If you have choose to minimize your budget in your SEO and content marketing efforts, you may greatly risk your organic traffic. When this COVID 19 pandemic ends and the search demands will return, you may still thrive even with low ranking in organic traffic. During these times, it is best to maintain your SEO strategy campaigns.
Conclusion
With today’s COVID 19 pandemic, almost all industries are having a hard time. Search demands are low and this is affecting most of online businesses.
On the flip side, SEO and other digital marketing campaigns may not be greatly affected, because search ranking drops are a result of the current pandemic and are not an SEO ranking issue. Search ranking will soon return to their usual levels and your efforts will be paid off.
In this time of crisis, all businesses should prioritize their customers’ and clients’ health and safety. So, just maintain your digital marketing efforts, work hard online and be safe.
