The Coronavirus has impacted many companies in terms of spend and timelines for their paid media efforts. Leveraging social channels can be a great way to engage with prospects and customers during this time.
Although we are starting to see the end of quarantine in some parts of the world, we still need to be mindful of how we approach our customers. Many companies realize they need to track KPIs other than immediate sales. In the midst of the ongoing changes, many organizations are struggling to identify what to do with their media budget during this time, resulting in 9 out of 10 marketers delaying planned campaigns. The lost brand awareness can hurt companies down the line. Instead, brands should shift their focus and media dollars to building relationships with their consumers and promoting their brand. Social media can be a great avenue to do this, due to the high engagement rate and low cost per impression.
In today’s environment, users are turning to social media in attempts to stay connected when physical contact is restricted. Facebook and other internet services have been reporting record traffic numbers as users strive to stay connected. With more users turning social media, this is an ideal time for brands to expand their paid social strategy, but this must be done carefully and correctly.
1. Evaluate your current social creative
“Are we starting with any appetizers today?” is something I am longing to hear. I miss the restaurants I used to frequent with my husband. Your clients feel the same way and the state of the world is constantly evolving with new information and resources related to the virus.
Creative and current copy should be created with empathy in mind. If you are a travel company, you may want to consider focusing your creative on dreaming of the future. If you are a restaurant, you may want to consider showcasing the safety measures you’re putting in place and reaching out to the community.. Your creative copy is an opportunity for you to foster that relationship between you and your consumer.
Evaluate your copy, creative and any user comments. Are reactions from users more negative than positive? Use customer and team reactions to gauge which creative needs to be updated and pause the creative that isn’t registering in today’s environment.
2. Change your tone on your social platforms
With COVID, the consumer behavior changed because it was forced to change. Make your social ads stand out with a more empathetic message over a sales driven message. Softening your tone can appeal to your audience and will separate your ads from the others flooding a user’s timeline. Let’s look at an example:
What makes this ad great?
The message is personal. YOU are dreaming of what will be in the future.
The CTA isn’t forceful. Nowhere does the campaign say to purchase your trip today. Instead it encourages user engagement by asking for their own Zagreb memories.
The campaign pulls at a user’s heart strings. We’re all dreaming of what we’ll do once this is over.
This campaign engages previous visitors by asking for their memories, and engages new potential visitors by asking them for the memories they want to make.
3. Reevaluate your Goals
Most of our campaigns come down to the bottom line -- conversions and revenue earned. Many industries have seen a decline in revenue and conversion growth due to the current environment. Unless you are seeing growth in your industry (E-commerce, telecommunication platforms, project management software, remote business solutions, etc), optimizing your campaigns for low-funnel conversions may not yield the results you are hoping to track.
If your main conversion action is no longer relevant, you need to look at a different action to optimize towards.
Can’t promote your whitepaper downloads as they’re no longer relevant? Optimize towards ‘Newsletter Signups.’ Build your CRM list and show users that you can provide relevant information.
Can’t promote your products as you’re only a brick-and-mortar operation? Highlight your products and how they can help users in your ads, while optimizing towards ‘Learn More’ or ‘Video Views.’ Re-focus on your user engagement.
By changing the conversions you’re optimizing towards, you may find some new opportunities you hadn’t considered before and will expand your upper-funnel audiences. There are ways to maneuver your marketing in COVID, but you need to be more flexible, more strategic and holistic in your approach.
4. Grow your top funnel Audiences
During this time, your remarketing audiences will continue to have the best ROAS. This audience already knows your brand has already shown interest either through completing a purchase or engaging with your site. While you should ensure that these campaigns are not capped (keep an eye on those frequency levels!), this is the perfect time to introduce your brand to new users as social media usage has increased significantly.
This is a good time to feed the upper-funnel for those conversions to come later down the road. Look at pushing new users to your site through brand awareness, reach and traffic efforts to build those remarketing lists for later.
But with these prospecting campaigns, you need to shift your mindset. Previously, your prospecting campaigns may have pushed whitepapers, info guides and product information advertising your products to business owners. Your previous mindset was finding new businesses to purchase your product or your business. Now your focus should be how your product or business can help businesses grow at this time.
If you’re selling a marketing solutions platform, highlight how your product can help businesses grow by incorporating statistics in your ads.
This change in mindset will help you approach potential customers and stick out from the competition.
5. Avoid Big Impact Testing
Don’t completely ignore testing, but be aware that the results might be skewed due to the current environment and may not be applicable in “normal” times.
Testing new audiences and creative now and over the next few weeks will provide valuable insights for how to inform strategy as time goes on, so it is important to keep testing those aspects. Any larger-scale tests (i.e. expanding aggressively into new markets) should wait until things stabilize.
It's always important to be able to pivot your strategy and messaging. With COVID-19 impacting many consumers and businesses, it's more important than ever.
What changes have you made to your paid social program? Are you seeing success? Comment below with how you have changed your strategy during COVID-19.
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