The outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, is having a tremendous impact on countries, communities, and businesses worldwide. During this time, it’s important to stay calm, safe and explore all options for your business.
We’re going to discuss the different digital marketing strategies that you can focus on during this COVID-10 outbreak, including:
1. Google My Business
2. Customer Service and Reputation Management
3. Frequently Asked Questions
4. Pivoting your Budget
5. Google Ads Campaigns
6. Social Media
Stay Safe
First things first, keep yourself, your family, employee’s and customers safe:
- Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds
- Avoid touching your faces, especially your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands
- Use hand sanitizer (with at least 60% alcohol) if soap and water is unavailable
- Avoid close contact with people who are sick
- Stay home if you are unwell
- Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue or the inside of your elbow
- Clean and disinfect frequently-used surfaces.
Stay Informed
Bing has developed an interactive map in order to keep people up-to-date on COVID-19. The map includes worldwide information about current active cases, recovered cases and fatal cases. By clicking on individual countries, you can see and read breaking news stories relevant to that country.
There is a lot of misinformation going around at present, so it’s critical — more than ever — that we all stay informed using information from trusted sources, the most reliable source for coronavirus updates is the World Health Organisation and your government’s website.
How Facebook and Google are Helping Small Businesses
Facebook has launched a business resource hub to help small businesses affected by the outbreak of COVID-19. They’ve also created the Facebook Small Business Grants Program, which aims to provide financial support in the form of cash grants and ad credits to eligible small businesses.
Google is partnering with the U.S government to develop a website that will be dedicated to providing information on COVID-19.
Google is also promoting the “Do the Five” campaign on their homepage, helping to raise awareness of the simple, yet crucial, measures we can all take to slow down the spread of COVID-19.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses Affected by Coronavirus
These are precarious times; everyone is anxious, but the worst thing you can do is drop everything out of sheer panic, including your digital marketing strategy. Maintaining your search engine marketing can help you continue creating revenue, which is especially important during potential economic downtimes.
Here are some digital marketing strategies to help your SEO, and your business:
1. Update your Google My Business
Whether your business has closed during this period or remains open, it’s imperative that you update your Google My Business profile. Google has announced that Maps will display if a business is temporarily closed.
Currently, the only way to mark your business as temporarily closed is to contact Google My Business Support. However, CEO, Sundar Pichai said, “In the coming days, we’ll make it possible for businesses to easily mark themselves as ‘temporarily closed’ using Google My Business.”
Google is actively telling businesses to update their Google My Business listing, especially if they've been affected by COVID-19. Google has released information on how to update business information in a bid to provide customers with the most accurate information.
Here’s what our SEO Manager recommends:
| What You Can Do | What You Should Not Do |
|
|
|
|
|
It’s essential for local businesses to update their Google My Business page, especially when “nearby” or “near me” searches are the most common.
2. Focus on Customer Service and Reputation Management
Brands like Facebook, as mentioned above, are creating content hubs to keep customers informed. What can you do? Small to medium businesses can utilize blogs to create content relevant to their industry or even as a means to update their customers as to the measures being taken at their business.
Now is the time to create and provide your customers with informative content. Reassure customers and let them know what you’re doing to help them.
3. Answer Frequently Asked Questions
People are using Google more than ever. Ensure that your website content answers the questions that searchers are looking for, whether that’s to see if you’re open or stocking certain products.
By having the answers to these questions — and adding FAQ schema to the pages they’re on — you have an opportunity to appear higher in the search engine results page (SERP), which in turn, can increase your traffic and click-through-rate (CTR.)
4. Be Prepared to Pivot your Budget
Buyer behaviour is surely about to change a lot over the next few weeks and months, so you must be ready to pivot your budget to react to these changes, whether that’s in the amount you’re spending on PPC or the keywords you are targeting. This is especially important for businesses that use traditional marketing methods, such as print advertising and event marketing. Now is the time to pivot to online advertising — every dollar counts.
Spend your budget wisely, especially if it can have a measurable short-term impact on your business. And, if you can afford it, invest in a long-term plan and utilize agencies for marketing strategies.
5. Create a Google Ads Campaign
As mentioned in the above points, it’s imperative that you let customers know if you are still open during this time. If you’re worried that you’re not getting the message across, one way to do so is by creating a Google Ads campaign. This is the best way to reach customers who intend to buy quickly.
You can also use the likes of Facebook Ads to reach your target audience on social media.
As we can expect a drop in demand for certain products and services, now is the time to use online advertising to make a push with discounts and support your sales team. Of course, depending on your product/service, you’ll need to be mindful of a potential disruption to stock and delivery.
6. Utilize Social Media
Similar to Google My Business, use your social media channels to keep your customers up-to-date with your business. You can create posts letting customers know if you’re open or not; if you're taking online orders or offering take out only, or simply if you’re keeping yourself and your employees safe. Generally, just being active online is encouraged.
Instagram recently launched a “Stay Home” sticker for Instagram Stories in a bid to encourage social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, profiles that use this sticker in their Stories get pulled into a new group Story, just for that sticker. It's a good way to get in front of your followers during this time with key messaging related to your business operations.
In Conclusion
Obviously, this is a scary time, but you need to think about the long term effects that this could have on your business if you stop all of your marketing efforts.
We encourage you to stay active online, answer your customer’s queries and let them know that you’re still there — that this is temporary.
We will get through this together. Stay safe.
on
Both Internet Marketing and online marketing grow your business in website
on
Great Post!
on
Good article. It is very useful and informative. Thank you
on
Thanks for sharing your helpful tips.
on
Great Article. Its really informative and innovative. keep posting with latest updates. Thanks for sharing.
on
Great article Shannon! Local businesses and franchises should consider advertising on mediums such as Facebook and Instagram, as a lower-funnel tactic main focus towards conversions. ‘Custom audiences’ can be used as primary targeting tactic, to expand customer base in a highly competitive environment, thus increasing chances of enhancing local revenue.
on
Those are some great tips Shannon! I agree with you. Utilizing social media is extremely important during the pandemic. Studies are showing almost half the population is spending more time on social media during lockdown. And this presents a great opportunity!
on
Thanks for sharing the strategies for digital marketing
on
Awesome.! thank you so much for sharing your helpful tips.
on
Hi Shannon,
Enjoyed reading your tips and it is very informative for those who need it for their business in this time of COVID 19.
Here are some more tips I am adding that will help in creating a digital marketing strategy during covid19.
– Re-visit your keywords and market the right ones
– Focus on reduced CPCs
– Offer free or paid-for online services
Hope this helps your readers!!
on
Great article! As marketing budgets erode, digital marketing or rather content marketing would remain a feasible option for many cash-strapped businesses. It is essential now more than ever to stay engaged with customers, to keep them informed and assure them of business continuity. This is a great time to do some content auditing and see how to repurpose some content into video format.
on
The blog was very helpful. I like the way you mentioned thinking about the long-term effects that this pandemic could have on your business if you stop all of your marketing efforts. This will help my Digital Marketing Company. Thanks for sharing this helpful post. Keep sharing more.
on
Thank you for the guide. I will use this info to enhance campaign in my office.
on
Great article! Small businesses need to leverage local digital marketing aggressively to stay engaged with customers and stay prepared to cater to them, after the crisis is over. The GMB update is very important and somehow businesses are not taking them seriously. Many customers see that a shop is open and call them, only to find no one answering. This can seriously cause damage to trust and reputation.
on
It’s great to read this post. As we all know that curent quarantne days are very very difficult for every kind of people and for business marketers it’s big challange to keep their website traffic and keep thier customers. i also suggest every business marketers to don’t panic and keep optimize your business.
on
Life may have changed as we all stay safe from the virus, but it is important to understand that business marketing activities still should still continue on some level. It’s just a matter of taking a step back and adapting strategies that are more sensitive to the times.
on
Read your article very very useful for us in covid-19 how to manage our google my business pages and how to manage our Digital Marketing Strategies & social media pages thanks for share very useful for me keep it up.