5 Tips for Managing PPC During the Coronavirus Outbreak
If there is one thing that can be said about humankind is that we have triumphed against all the odds. COVID-19 has spread fear, stress, worry, and tension across the globe. Businesses are down and with it, the advertisers are also facing troubles to get new clients and manage projects.
The advertisers need to change their strategies and marketing tactics as per the situation. But, nobody could have prepared themselves for what is happening right now. So, to help you in managing your PPC campaigns in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, here are a few healthy tips that will let you keep going and keep hustling.
Change the Business Proposition and Messaging
Due to the current situation, companies can change their product and services to better conform to the present demand. Ask yourself a question that whether or not your product comes under an essential commodity.
For instance, if your product can be modified towards fulfilling purposes of social distancing, work from home, schooling at home, entertainment, streaming, communication, and other important medical services.
If your product or service can be modified to fulfill any of these purposes, you can modify your campaigns and messages to promote them.
In PPC campaigns the language that you use is really important! In this scenario, if you are sending across the wrong message it will not look good for future correspondence. So, it’s better to change the language used in your campaigns.
- If you have mentioned timings, change them or remove them.
- Try to remove images that promote togetherness.
- Include shipping information about the products (free, fast, delayed, interrupted)
- If you are promoting an offline business, add or change the business hours.
- Tune your messages in a manner that shows your response to the pandemic.
Convey a greater extent of information via ads and other communication channels. Use these channels to share the required information about the pandemic and how best to fight it.
These small gestures will maintain a constant connection between the business and the customer. So that when things are back to normal, the prospective customers will be acquainted with your brand.
Check your Budget and Daily Spend
This would be a good time to re-evaluate the budget spend of your existing campaigns. You should divert your budget from non-essential campaigns towards more essential PPC campaigns.
Also try to promote the best performing campaigns as the lower performing campaigns are not getting enough returns. If your budget is tighter try to manage the PPC campaigns with a lower budget.
One healthy tip is to look at the monthly spend and the yearly spend instead of the daily spend. This will help you better understand the budget requirements and performance of the existing campaigns.
You can also use Google’s Smart Bidding feature that allows automated bidding. This will help you as an advertiser to adjust the CPC bids according to the set goals.
Look at the Search Behavior
While people are not allowed to go out, they are still roaming the world from their homes via the web. What are they searching for and how can you better approach them where they are searching also matters.
For this, you can use Coronavirus search trends and analyze what the people are searching for during the lockdown period. For instance, in the 2nd week of April, people were searching for “Scavenger hunts for kids”, “Earth Day for Kids”, “Zoom games for kids”, “What is my stimulus deposit?” and so on. If the product or service you are promoting comes under the purview of these searches, include these keywords in your ads.
You may need to conduct real-time reactive monitoring of your campaigns and try to alter them towards COVID-19 related content. More importantly, it is also essential to conduct predictive searches and get a list of negative keywords.
COVID-19 related negative keywords include corona, sars, coronavirus, Wuhan, epidemic, pandemic, etc. It is evident that the searches for these keywords will be spiking right now. But, if any of these keywords are not related to the product or service that you are promoting, then it may lead to an increase in the budget spend.
Use the Old Channels:
Facebook has claimed that people are coming back to the platform and they have seen a 50% increase in messaging and video chat usage. This means that as an advertiser you are getting a higher proportion of the users on a single platform.
In turn, your outreach will increase all the while keeping the budget unchanged. Facebook says that with a higher proportion of usage in messaging and video chat (which are not monetized) there is a decrease in the ad revenue.
Less ad revenue means that some marketers won’t be running ads anymore as they have to spend more when earnings are not that high in the present situation.
Other than Facebook, there is an increase in the usage of YouTube (in-video ad placements). So, you can also place your ads on YouTube for better exposure.
Target those places where people are consuming more amount of content. This can be Google, Pinterest, Microsoft Audience ads among others.
Be ready to jump back to Normal:
Things will go back to normal very soon. And when they do, you will have to jump back to the normal wagon. So, be prepared for it. Because once all of this is over, the customers will be looking to re-engage.
However, this is not sure what will be the terms and conditions of such an engagement. Time will tell that. But, you must be prepared for everything and be ready to face what comes in the aftermath of Covid19. Till then stay safe, keep hustling, and hope for the best.