5 PPC and Social Ads Tips During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly stopped the world economy in its tracks. While most advertisers are in a panic, we must remember there is always opportunity in chaos - if we are brave enough to seize it!

Below are 5 helpful tips for managing your PPC campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Pivoting Your Value Props and Communication

With some creative thinking, many businesses can find an opportunity to shift their product or service focus over to something more applicable to meet the needs of consumers during the quarantine. Ask yourself: can my business meet the new needs of the COVID-19 pandemic, or can it adapt and move into the virtual world?

Take a step back and see from a birds-eye-view just how you can pivot your product or service offerings to meet some of the following needs people have today during the pandemic:

• Home offices
• Homeschooling
• Social distancing 
• Communication services
• Streaming services
• Medical products and services
• Other essential products and services

If you can successfully pivot to address some of these new needs, or simply adapt your business to the digital world, you can promote your products and services to consumers via targeted and relevant PPC campaigns. 

2. Budget and Spend Management

This is the time to reevaluate and revise your PPC budget and spend amounts. Take this opportunity to move your budget over to the products and services you offer that are most applicable to today’s needs. 

Consider moving your budget away from low performing campaigns, over to better performing campaigns, and setting lifetime budgets instead of daily budgets for easier management. Examine campaign budgets vs. actual spend throughout the year to see if there is any unspent budget floating around that can be better applied to high performing PPC campaigns at this time.

3. Consumer Search Behavior Online

Just because people are in quarantine and practicing social distancing because of COVID-19, does not mean that they have stopped searching for things and making purchases online. For many markets, audiences are logging more screen time now than ever before. 

Take this opportunity to highlight your value propositions such as delivery services for your products, delivery times, costs, etc. You can even use ad copy and ad extensions to further promote services and value propositions such as free delivery, fast delivery, as well as any pick-up and drop-off options for consumers. 

This is also the time to review your negative keywords, as the context of people’s needs is changing, and so are their search terms. 

4. Captive Audiences 

With more and more people staying home, they are consuming an increased amount of online communication usage and content consumption. People are simply spending more time in front of their screens. 

Consider running campaigns in any of these areas:

• YouTube and in-video ad placements
• Facebook and Instagram ads
• Display ad expansion on the Google Display Network
• Pinterest campaigns to captivate shoppers looking for new ideas and products

With this increase of people online, the opportunity is right for strong PPC and social ad campaigns!

5. Returning to Normalcy

We must also keep in mind that at some point, life will return to normal-ish. Bans and restrictions will be lifted, and people will want some normalcy back in their lives. People will want to get back outside and engage with each other. The extent to which we will return to that normalcy is yet to be seen. But all businesses should be prepared to pivot again when social-distancing and quarantine rules are lifted. This will cause yet another unpredictable shift in our market, and advertisers must be ready to pivot again with their PPC and social media ad campaigns.