Coronavirus is shaking up business and consumer behaviour on a massive scale. But while the full economic consequences of the pandemic are unclear, one thing is certain — that the current climate is boosting digital media consumption across the board.
With people increasingly working from home — and spending less time communicating in person — digital media consumption is on the rise across social media, video, e-commerce and other interactive platforms.
But what does this mean for your business?
Adapting — or enhancing — your approach to digital can help you effectively reach, connect with, and engage more people during these uncertain times. Here’s how.
Enhanced communication
Digital content marketing is an effective way for you to remain in touch with your customers and increase lead generation (and conversions) during the coronavirus pandemic.
With large events cancelled, there’s never been a more important time to turn your attention to digital content. Rolling out a targeted content strategy, delivered directly to your online audiences, is a crucial way that your business can reach — and stay engaged with — your customers.
Regardless of the ever-changing face-to-face guidelines, communicating and engaging with your audience online can remain undisrupted — so long as you have a clear, consistent and timely strategy in place.
Not only will a carefully planned content marketing strategy reinforce your brand identity and values during challenging time, meaningful messages — NewsCred observed — will it help you to maintain brand loyalty and reassure your customers that you are still here – and will value their business – throughout 2020.
Meaningful messages
Technically part of the above’s tailored content strategy, meaningful messages won’t just get you brownie points with Google (though that’s always welcome), serving your audience content that’s relevant, valuable and relatable means you're more likely to attract — and retain — your audience. This, in turn, can lead to enhanced leads, more conversions, long term brand loyalty and — in the long run — increased ROI.
During uncertain times, there’s never been a greater need for quality content. Churning out content for content’s sake, or — worse still — just plain bad content can do more harm than good.
As Business2Community puts it;
'Producing content for the sake of producing content is a terrible approach. In content marketing, the content that is made public should have a purpose…you have to work to control the spread of information that hurts rather than helps.'
Click here to find out more about the importance of relevant brand content in 2020.
Adapted PPC campaigns
As people turn to digital media consumption, digital ad spend has become all the more important for many businesses.
Though coronavirus is impacting face-to-face business, if your brand has the capacity to deliver goods or services via online methods then now is the time to rethink — and adapt — your paid search campaigns.
Despite social distancing, self-isolation, and working from home scenarios, people are still searching for goods and services online. In fact, eMarketer expects total media ad spending worldwide will still reach $691.70 billion in 2020 — which is up by 7% from 2019.
If you have existing PPC campaigns in place and need to rethink your budget, there are a number of manual and automated bidding strategies that can help you optimise a reduce spend during this time, too. Our Google certified digital marketing experts have a reputation for driving down the cost while maximising conversions for clients of all shapes, sizes and sectors.
Not sure where to start? Click here to see the top PPC trends for 2020.
An optimised website
With user behaviour changing and technology advancing at record speed, it’s never been so important to keep your website up-to-date.
Whether you’re an e-commerce business managing (or looking to attract) additional traffic, or a brand looking to drive more traffic to your online content — a safe, speedy and robust website is essential for success.
With more people online during the current climate, there’s never been a better time to drive traffic to your site. But it will only be worthwhile (and result in conversions) if your site can cope with the increased demands.
Evaluating everything from page loading speeds and security updates to your site’s navigation and purchasing process (if applicable) will be essential for optimising any calls to action you intend to communicate over the coming weeks and months.
Tech-led meetings
According to eMarketer, many businesses have already increased their reliance on teleconferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and Zoom.
As more and more employees switch to remote working scenarios due to public health concerns, using these enterprising tools will allow communications to continue with minimal disruption.
As an agency, we’ve already rolled out these methods across the board and are carrying on business as usual. Despite the increased restrictions on face-to-face meetings and remote working conditions, we’re still delivering meetings, presentations and workshops using these valuable tools.
Not only does this allow us to deliver our service without delay — but it also allows us to remain in contact with our valued clients during these times, too.
If you know your brand can be navigating these challenging times smartly through its digital efforts then we’re here to help. Whether it’s making sure your website can handle the increased online traffic, creating the most effective online messages or implementing a more cost-effective PPC strategy, drop us a line and we can arrange a virtual meeting to see how your brand can adapt, survive, and thrive.
Resources
https://insights.newscred.com/importance-content-marketing-during-coronavirus-pandemic/
https://www.emarketer.com/content/the-biggest-business-impacts-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-according-to-business-insider-intelligence
https://hbr.org/2020/03/communicating-through-the-coronavirus-crisis
https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/what-the-coronavirus-teaches-us-about-content-marketing-02293084
