Brands are suffering in this period of coronavirus crisis. Quarantine restrictions are limiting customers from visiting local retail stores, logistical issues are diminishing e-commerce sales and manufacturing closures. The ongoing crisis is ramping up the pressure on marketers who are expected to ride this crisis wave. While some companies have high demand and relevancy for their products and services, others are struggling to get sales. This means you need to rethink your marketing efforts to make them more relevant.
As publicists, brand marketers, and agency owners, many of us are not prepared for such a crisis that affects the market on a global scale. Most of us have never lived during a pandemic, let alone personally experienced one. But we must prepare for an ongoing crisis. As marketers, we should not get bogged down.
In the agency world, how marketers handle this crisis will separate the pros from the noobs. Remember when everyone thought they could buy social media services for a few bucks because their kid in college could do it? Now this will reset the playing field.
This will be a time when it will suddenly become evident as to why some agencies charge a premium for their services. The bottom funnel marketers will keep on marketing through this as if nothing is going on. Their posts will be out of tune. Their scheduled tweets and pre-written content for campaigns will continue as if we were still living in a pre-pandemic online environment.
Strategy not only means knowing to post and when but also when to stay silent. Clients will pester and poke. They will ask the obvious, “Why should I pay you if you are not going to post anything?” But they should know that they are paying you because you know that shouting while nobody is interested is not going to work.
Coronavirus will impact every sector and industry, including marketing, public relations, and social media.
Here are some ideas which can bridge the gap in this period of crisis:
- Use Social Media to connect with your Audience
Every one of us is tackling this crisis in our own way and most of us are locked in our homes with our whole family. We are not allowed to do anything, especially things that most of us love to do viz, meeting up with our buddies, going for movies, eating at our favorite food joints, etc. This might seem unimportant but this actually takes a heavy toll on all our minds. So as a brand it is time to step up and show empathy instead of pushing products and services and bothering about sales only. More people are on social media now while stuck at home, scanning for updates, and trying to stay connected. It is a great time to show initiative as a brand and use your business to contribute to the needed and assist the helpless. Leverage your deeds in the correct manner on social media and promote your brand effectively.
- Being Online is the key now more than ever
It’s quite evident that search traffic and social media login times have surged significantly in the past few weeks. This trend is destined to continue because people are glued to their phones, tablets, laptops, and other gadgets constantly looking for updates and also crunching through online content like never before as they look for ways to pass time and keep their minds occupied as they are forced to stay at home. Anything online right now will be consumed more than ever before. This is the time to step up and not be hidden in the online landscape. It’s the perfect time to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to climb to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs)so that your business gets the maximum exposure online.
- It’s time to put a tick on pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC marketing can enable you to gain a competitive advantage as a brand as more and more people are at home with their eyes scanning everything online. Also to add a cherry on top of that cake, on an average CPC, has decreased by 5-6% across all sectors for the past two weeks. So it will let you gain a considerable market share without breaking the bank. Also word is CPC will continue to fall in the weeks to come.
- It’s time to leapfrog your competition
Nothing pays like staying on the front page of SERPs. It increases organic traffic to your website and helps your target audience to steer clear of your competitors. Climbing to the top of the list on the front page of SERPs is a time taking process. You need to incorporate strategic SEO techniques to quickly shift gears and move up the list. This is of utmost importance because you don’t want your customers to search with certain keywords and call up your competitors for the products or services that you are also offering. It is advisable that you continue to optimize your website and content on a daily basis and also not abandon your SEO efforts else a pause in these will result in you losing turf in terms of search results and end up losing a lot of business.
- Is your business ready for the long run?
TheCoronavirus outbreak will be a distant memory soon after a few months. After this phase goes away and the normal way of life returns, consumers will also surface with their normal purchasing behaviors. So pausing your marketing efforts especially SEO will have a compounded impact on your business in the long run. SEO is a long-term strategy that needs months if not years of disciplined efforts to fetch results. Theoretically speaking, the steps you take in SEO today will show results after 2-3 months. Thus pausing your SEO campaign now will result in your business losing valuable ranks in SERPs and you are destined to take a hit in terms of organic search traffic after things go back to how it was before.
