What we’re in the midst of has thrown just about everything about “regular” life into chaos.
By watching the news these days, it would be easy to assume that unless you are selling food or booze, it’s best to pull all your advertising dollars because there’s no way you’ll get a return, right?
Not necessarily.
Maybe you are struggling with the feeling that it feels a bit tone-deaf to keep advertising in the midst of all the suffering, and you want to pull back because of that.
What we’re finding is that the businesses who were ready for going digital or who were nimble enough to pivot quickly in Q1 have done really well. We’re seeing record results for our clients in online-friendly sectors and it’s possible for your business too.
Here are several reasons to reconsider those assumptions.
- Both Facebook and Google are rumoured to be releasing grants for small businesses in light of the economic downturn, so existing customers could possibly to be looking at getting granted some ad spending “on the house”.
- Lower advertising costs. Fewer advertisers mean better rates. Cost per click and CPMs are lower than they’ve been for a long time. In fact, the CPMs have never been this low on Facebook.
- More people than ever are at home and online with little else to do with their time. Chances are your ads will be seen by more people who will be paying attention to ads.
- People are looking for things online – it’s how most people are shopping right now – there are plenty of targeting options to put in place to make them more likely to find your offerings.
- Amazon is having issues with fulfilment – this is an opportunity for independent brands with small distribution channels.
- Additionally, folks are isolated and a desire to feel connected to their community can drive buying behaviour back into their own communities – be that local brick and mortar location or their online social media community.
- People are absolutely still buying. Retail therapy hasn’t gone away, it has just moved online. There’s also a category of goods and services called “New Essentials” like toys and hobbies, health and fitness equipment, housewares and hardware to help pass the time. Comfort items like soft new PJs will be ‘essential’ to some – offering comfort and continuing to make sales to keep your lights on is in service to yourself and your clientele.
Ways to make this work for you:
Transform your offering: Think restaurants repackaging supplies to become a grocery outlet. Or a meal preparation kit business.
Expand your offering: If you usually sell 12-week courses for 100’s of dollars, can you offer a pared-down digital version of it for a reduced price to reach more customers?
Let them browse a different way: putting your whole store inventory online not feasible? Innovate with photo posts on social media offering as much detail on the product, (sizing etc..) and how to order or go live video via social media with a show-and-tell of your items.
Focus on email and content marketing – In the words of Maya Angelou “People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Communicating with your audience now, with empathy, compassion and reassurance, demonstrating a commitment to wellbeing can make a huge difference. For example, I’ve been very loyal to a certain grocery chain for the last 15 years. But I somehow ended up on the email list of a competitor right before the pandemic hit and the compassionate and community-minded communication I’ve been reading from them has impressed me a great deal. It’s changing the notions I had previously held about that brand.
If you can afford to, switching up your strategy from seeking conversion to a sale to seeking conversion to a lead, particularly if you do it in combination with empathetic email marketing can set you up for even better business success after this is all over with. With lower advertising costs and people online a lot, leads are very inexpensive right now.
If you think your product/service would be a good fit for the 2020 ecosystem, reach out to us for a marketing consultation.
