How to Market Your Business During The CoronaVirus

How to Market Your Business During The CoronaVirus

Nervous, Anxious, Uncertain of what to do next? You’re not alone. We are all there with you. The Coronavirus has shaken up everyone’s world and is making all of us question: How do I work from home with kids screaming in the background? Why would anyone change out pajamas? What day is it? What should I be working on? How do you market your business during this rough time?

While we may never know why someone would change out of pajamas, we can definitely help you with recommendations for marketing during the CoronaVirus.

Be a Helpful Resource

Navigating a global pandemic is brand new territory for everyone, but the brands that learn to listen to their customers and offer genuine help will succeed now and for the long-run.

Some really great brands are crushing it at being a helpful resource for their customers:

• The Daily Carnage – Sends “operationsmile” videos to their email database just to lighten the mood
• Aquarium of the Pacific – Launched Aquarium Online Academy to bring educational programming as well as fun and entertaining activities to their community
• Walmart – Will host a special shopping hour at their stores from 6 am to 7 am every Tuesday, for customers 60 and up

So how can you help? Answer these questions: What are your customers worried about? What are their challenges right now? How can you be an asset during this time?

Some great ways to help are:

• Offer free classes, virtual tours, craft ideas, or things to do: everyone is bored at home right now and looking to be entertained
• Share something funny or calming: anxieties are high and everyone could use a laugh
• Share your expertise for free: now is the time to give your expert advice. For instance, our lawyers send us their legal opinions on changing workplace protocols. Just make sure you are not spreading misinformation.
• Elevate some of your customers’ financial burdens: finances are tightening for most people, so removing cancellation fees or offering free services for a couple of months will go over very well with your customers. Just make sure it makes sense for your company.

Communicate the Changes

Most brands are already doing this – our email inboxes can prove it. But if you haven’t, send out an email or post on social media to let your leads and customers know how CoronaVirus is affecting your company and how that, in turn, will affect them. For instance:

• Did your hours change?
• Will there be delays in communication, fulfilling orders, shipping?
• Did your fees change? Are you waiving fees?
• Are you lengthening subscriptions? Not collecting payments?
• Are you launching new initiatives?

Outline what is going to change internally to get through this time period and then evaluate how and if this will affect customers. If it will, send an email that outlines all these changes.

In regards to the email, make sure you bold what you want the customer to digest. Everyone is getting a ton of these emails and nobody wants to read paragraphs – they just want to know: what is changing and what should they expect. Outline both of those in bold and use a bullet-list where it makes sense.

Prioritize Loyal Customers

It’s more cost-effective to get a repeat buyer to buy again than generate a first-time buyer. If a person bought from you in the past, you have their information – what they like, what they purchased previously, etc.

This makes it easier to market to those customers. Send an email with a unique VIP promotion, boost up your remarketing campaigns, and set-up new creative for your remarketing campaigns. Rely on your loyal customers to help with sales and providing referrals during this tough time. They may surprise you.

Pivot Your Creatives

According to what we are seeing and what other industry experts are reporting, the industries that were less impacted during this time period are food and beverage, health and wellness, healthcare, medical, office, and school supplies, and home and garden.

That list leaves a lot of us out in the cold.

So how can we compete? Take a look at your current creatives and see what you need to adjust to relate to customers and the current situation. For instance, add “working from home” messaging, or “open for delivery” or even “support small business” to help boost your performance.

Analyze the Damage

Just like during a Recession, you need to understand how the economic changes are affecting your KPIs (Key performance indicators) for all your marketing channels and overall performance.

The best way to do this is to look at year-over-year data (or monthly or previous time period, depending on accuracy) and look at the timeframe starting March 9th to yesterday. March 9th is the day we see traffic dip for most of our clients; March 16th is another slowdown on conversions.

Look at this telling-factors:

• Cost per Click: Did it increase or decrease? It should have decreased since Amazon decreased their media spend.
• Impressions: Are people still searching for your service or product right now? More people are at home but maybe your product or service is not needed right now.
• Cost: Are you seeing a decrease or increase in cost? For most of our clients, this stayed relatively the same since campaigns have budget restrictions.
• Conversions: How has your sales or leads decreased or increased? Most likely, you saw a decrease if you are in those industries that were most impacted. In that case, how much did it drop? How much has your CPA increased?

Knowing these metrics will help you determine how to restructure your budget during the CoronaVirus.

Develop a New Marketing Strategy that Works for You

You’ll hear it from multiple resources:

• CPCs are dropping; Amazon is lessening its presence on Google Ads to allow small businesses a chance.
• Impressions are remaining steady or increasing as more people are home and spending time on social media and search engines.
• Cost is declining (due to Amazon) as well as your competitors are most likely pulling back on spend during this turmoil.

But what are they leaving out?

Take a closer look. There is no mention of conversions. We’ve seen the conversion rates drop for those industries most impacted by the economic climate change.

So yes, it’s cheaper to advertise, you will most likely gain more traffic and brand awareness, BUT do not count on conversions following right now. People are tightening up their purse strings.

But that’s not to say there isn’t an opportunity here if you can afford it.

If you are financially able to do so, it does make sense to remain steady during this time period and increase in areas that have shown positive performance now and in the past.

This is a long-term play: you’re going to capture more market share as your competitors pull back and then you can retarget those audiences in a month or so (when the economy picks up) with a remarketing campaign and convert them into a customer.