How is the coronavirus pandemic going to impact digital marketing?

In this article I, Neeraj, am going to go through what I think business owners should be doing in response to the coronavirus. We’re getting emails from people asking us what they should do with their marketing amid these unprecedented times.

There is a lot of panic, and we’re given everyone the same advice…

The news makes people question whether or not they should pause their marketing or reduce their budget or things like this. The funny thing is, there’s a statistic in the classic business book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins that says almost all the successful businesses and Fortune 500 companies were started in recessions…

And the reason I bring that up is when there’s so much panic all around, your competitors are panicking too. Warren Buffett is famous for saying that when there’s fear in the air that is when he pounces and buys more stock. When others are optimistic, he stops buying, but when others get fearful, he buys stocks at amazing prices. And we all know how successful that man is in his field.

If the marketplace is in fear, and you can be the one brand that’s confident in your industry… that is where great brands are built!

So let’s think of the realities about coronavirus

• More searches come when people are spending more time at home
• More people spend time on social media as they work from home

I’m talking about Google searches for which what matters is SEO or Google Ads… and probably spending more time on Facebook and Instagram too because they’re less likely to be in their office.

So this could actually be a time where people are spending more time on the internet and therefore many of you’d want to double down while your competitors are in fear. The way online advertising works is through an auction – a bidding system – and most people have stopped ads during these times. It’s a great time to get more clicks on less spending.

For our own clients– we looked at the number of clicks we got, the number of impressions we got and actually on our own advertising account we got more impressions this week than we did in the past weeks.

The point is this: though if your competitors are backing out and you’re still going after the impressions in your market even if you’re not getting as high of a conversion rate (because people may not start business any time soon), do you think that’s going to be a win once all of this fades away? And when  it does, these people will already know your brand… Certainly for B2B businesses and services this is something to consider.

Coronavirus impact on Digital Marketing

So what I would say is this, the Coronavirus pandemic will have the following impact on Digital Marketing:

• it’s probably going to increase online activity
• it’s probably going to raise concerns for your competitors and hence lower the cost-per-click for any online ads
• it’s going to be an opportunity for you to double down on your internet marketing strategy
  however, it’s also going to reduce your conversion rate (people who actually buy the product or hire your services) as a percentage of total clicks or leads

A note here: there are obviously businesses for which advertising at this point wont make sense. If you’re a restaurant owner in Italy or run a movie hall or have other such physical outlets where you need a lot of people to come in, this might be too early for you to jump back in to your digital marketing game. For others though, this is a golden time to generate leads and start warming them, or even converting them, while the rest of the businesses stop all their advertisement.

So what are your thoughts for your business?