When most business owners plan out a year of marketing, they take a lot of things into account. The changes of the seasons. Holidays. Introduction of new policies or regulations. New products or services they hope to introduce.
Rarely does something drop in so quickly, it alters all of your plans on a dime. Yet the pandemic has made business owners everywhere rethink everything.
- Should you keep marketing?
- How should you market?
- Should you continue with your PPC campaigns? Or turn everything off?
As a digital marketing company, we’re adjusting to this in real time, just like you. But because this is our business, we’re seeing things from the inside. We’re keeping our pulse on what business owners are doing, what the industry looks like, and then giving you our best advice.
So let’s talk about pay-per-click. If you use PPC campaigns to drive traffic to your products and services, what should you be doing right now and in the weeks and months that follow?
How is your business positioned in the middle of the pandemic?
Some businesses are soaring right now. If you sell toilet paper, you’ve seen a big increase in traffic. If you sell work-from-home tools such as video conferencing, you’ve seen a rise in your numbers.
That means you might have to rethink your business slightly to take advantage of the new wave of search.
Stretch beyond that and think about how you can morph and change to meet current demand. If you’ve always used phrases like “visit our store” on your landing pages, maybe it’s time to rewrite your copy. Maybe it’s time to add new terminology such as “curbside pickup” or “we ship anywhere.”
If you’ve decided to leave your PPC campaigns running for brand recognition, be sure every graphic, every landing page, is sensitive to what our current society is feeling.
Think softer with your ads, while being conscious of how you can incorporate your new ideas as we move forward.
Continue to define your customer
While staying-in-place may have changed our ideas forever, we’re still human. That means when all this is over, we’ll move forward and fall back into a lot of our old patterns. With a new twist.
A lot of that you can already predict.
Shopping is going to change. Travel is going to change. The way we work will change too.
While many businesses used to fight working from home, this may open up the mindset of business managers everywhere. That means new and improved tools are going to be needed in many industries as we shift to this new way of working.
What will travel look like? One thing is for sure; we’ll consider safety in new ways. There are many ways companies can approach these new ideas. But it all starts with getting into the heads of your prospects and determining what they want now.
This is where your copywriting will come in handy. A good copywriter will understand how to look at the world through this new lens, and use it to create new tools that will attract the right customers to you.
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Shift your PPC campaigns in another direction
We’re just going to say it; sometimes it makes sense to halt your PPC campaigns. If you’re a retail shop that relies on PPC for walk-in traffic, continually paying for PPC just doesn’t make sense.
But what does make sense is to rethink your entire approach.
PPC campaigns are used to drive traffic to specific landing pages. What’s your approach for those landing pages? What message do they convey? What do people see when they get there?
Now may be the perfect time for updating your content.
Take a second look at your website. When did you last update it? (Hint: If you still use Flash for any part of your platform, your website is officially dead.)
Then ask yourself a variety of questions:
- How can I make my web presence stronger?
- Can I add more ecommerce for my clients to shop online?
- Can I sell products or services differently, so I can widen my audience base?
- Can I give a clearer message about what my company stands for?
- Can I go deeper with my online message – think email campaigns and autoresponders?
Even one of these questions can shift your business in new directions. If you haven’t strategized on a deeper level in quite some time, consider this your opportunity.
Maybe it’s time to give other channels another look
Have you ever noticed that humans are creatures of habit? Once something is working reasonably well, rarely do we go searching for ways to improve it.
Consider the pandemic your wakeup call. Your shake-up to your business plan.
At the end of March, Facebook announced that in the countries hit the hardest by the pandemic, they’ve seen an uptick in messaging on their site by more than 50 percent. People might not be able to get out and connect with people in person, but their desire for human connection isn’t waning.
Have you considered moving to other channels with your message? While a PPC campaign might not feel right to you, maybe it’s time to consider another alternative.
Facebook had 1.66 billion daily active users as of the end of 2019. Add in their other tools like Instagram and WhatsApp, the number pushed to 2.26 billion.
Think your business could thrive with even a fraction of that traffic?
Of course, Facebook might not be the perfect fit for your business. That’s all determined by digging deep and discovering where your customers like to hangout.
Take the time to do that right now while you have the time. Redefine your market share in a whole new way.
Discover ways to speak to them on a deeper level.
And maybe, when we all go back to living our lives in the “new world”, you might just discover a deeper connection with your target audience.
