With the COVID crisis becoming a serious health concern, things are changing for businesses and marketers across the globe. Companies are looking for ways to conserve their spending in the time of economic uncertainty.
And marketing budgets are always the first ones to get axed in such situations. Obviously, you will be in two minds about continuing your digital marketing campaigns right now.
And when it comes to PPC advertising, the concern can get bigger considering that it translates into a significant investment. On the other hand, you may not be willing to give up on its benefits. The key question is how to manage your campaigns in a way that they yield maximum benefits with minimum spending in the current situation.
The idea is to make some adjustments in your strategy so that it aligns with the industry-wide disruptions. Here are some ideas you can implement to steer your tactics in the right direction.
Tip #1: Act and React Quickly
PPC best practices in normal times emphasize digging deep into campaign-specific data to unlock success with the existing and upcoming campaigns. But the only rule during such uncertain times is that there are no rules. No one knows what will work and what won’t; so the best possible approach would be to take calculated guesses and put them into action.
While acting and reacting quickly may sound risky, not doing anything can put you behind the competitors. When it comes to collecting performance data, you cannot wait too long.
Rather, you need to monitor the campaign closely and take agile decisions to move it in the right direction. Getting ultra-granular is the best approach, so assessing the performance by the hour and day makes sense.
Tip #2: Read the Pulse of the Industry
Since you cannot expect a lot to be available in the name of historical campaign performance data, the best way to move ahead is by reading the pulse of your industry and also the world as a whole. Try to assess how much COVID is dominating searches in your business domain.
Figure out whether your industry has slowed down or is still going strong in the present situation because it will decide the direction for your campaigns. Additionally, it will help you quickly identify opportunities and capitalize on them before others do. You can actually tweak your campaign based on the searches that are trending right now and be more visible to your target audience.
Tip #3: Refine your Messaging but do It Carefully
At present, you will need to refine your brand’s messaging holistically, whether it is about your PPC ads or other content resources that you create for the audience. It has to be sensitive and empathic enough to connect with the audience and drive them to buy.
Hiring a PPC expert is a good idea if you want a well-aligned campaign with the right messaging. To understand how a specialist can help you ramp up your campaigns according to the prevailing situation and audience mindset. The focus, right now, should be on creating ad copies that highlight the value your product or service can deliver in the current circumstances.
Tip #4: Minimize Wasted ad Spend
In normal circumstances, you can continue investing even in average-performing campaigns as long as they bring in some kind of value for the business. But you cannot take this approach right now. Rather, pausing or even dumping such campaigns should be your priority because you need to minimize wastage in every way possible.
Also, keep close track of the campaigns that are performing and divert the saved money there. Adjust your bids on the basis of the time of day when your audience is most active. Adding COVID-related search terms to negative keywords is also important as it will prevent the ads from showing up for irrelevant search terms that are not related to your products or services.
Obviously, this may greatly cut down the ad spend wastage for your business. Despite the crisis situation, you still need to spend money to make your business run profitably. Merely pausing your PPC campaigns altogether is, therefore, not the right thing to do.
However, you need to understand that simply throwing money at your campaigns is wrong as well. The best approach would be to figure out the most efficient ways to keep the campaigns up and running.
And in fact, this may just be the smartest move considering that people are most likely to buy online now and in the future when social distancing will continue to prevail.
