As COVID-19 spreads across the U.S., its impact on the dai­ly lives of cit­i­zens and com­pa­nies alike has been chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly by the day.

What we’ve found, over­whelm­ing­ly, is that there isn’t an all-pur­pose rec­om­men­da­tion that will work for every sin­gle one of our clients. Social dis­tanc­ing and an eco­nom­ic down­turn will impact each indus­try in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ways, so there can’t be a one-size-fits-all answer. We also know that things are chang­ing dai­ly, so the right answer today may be dif­fer­ent than the right answer tomorrow.

Despite much uncer­tain­ty, we’ve been able to pro­vide guid­ance to clients as they begin to reshape their strate­gies. Here are some of the ways we’re advis­ing our clients to nav­i­gate the cur­rent climate.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Paid Media

  • As always, make data-dri­ven deci­sions. We can make assump­tions about how our cus­tomers will respond to this cri­sis, but we’ve also nev­er been in this sit­u­a­tion before. Look at your ana­lyt­ics often, pay­ing close atten­tion to the most recent 1–2 weeks to see how the num­bers are chang­ing, then dive fur­ther into your data to try and under­stand where those changes are stem­ming from.
  • Find cre­ative ways to take your busi­ness online and be proac­tive in get­ting the word out. If you nor­mal­ly do in-per­son con­sult­ing, find a tool that allows you to offer a seam­less vir­tu­al meet­ing. If you typ­i­cal­ly depend on store vis­its for cus­tomers to see your prod­ucts up close, amp up the use of video to show­case your prod­ucts online. If your busi­ness is exclu­sive­ly brick-and-mor­tar, con­sid­er options like e‑commerce, deliv­ery, and vir­tu­al con­tent. Once you’ve worked out a new online mod­el, let peo­ple know via your PPC cam­paigns and social media.
  • Peo­ple have ques­tions, so make it easy for them to find answers. Keep your brand­ed search ads run­ning so that peo­ple can eas­i­ly find your site or phone num­ber. Have you cre­at­ed a COVID-19 FAQ page? Add it as a site link to your search ads. By mak­ing answers easy to find now, you’re more like­ly to win a long-term cus­tomer once things are back to normal.
  • Know how your com­peti­tors are respond­ing to the cri­sis. By using tools like SEM­Rush and Auc­tion Insights, you can get a good (although imper­fect) sense of how your com­pe­ti­tion may be chang­ing their PPC strat­e­gy. You may find that there are now gaps that you can lever­age, mean­ing low­er com­pe­ti­tion and low­er CPCs. You may also find that your best bet will be to max out your adver­tis­ing for a spe­cif­ic niche audi­ence that isn’t being tar­get­ed by the competition.
  • Above all, be sen­si­tive. Don’t be the com­pa­ny that takes advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion to play into people’s fear in order to sell more. Be aware that, yes, life is still going on, but it’s not busi­ness as usu­al. Empa­thy will go a long way here, and by putting your­self in your audience’s shoes, you may be able to under­stand how best to con­tin­ue reach­ing them with infor­ma­tion and con­tent they find valu­able.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Paid Media

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • SEO is a long-term strat­e­gy. On-page opti­miza­tions, tech­ni­cal SEO, and link build­ing all work togeth­er to yield results that you may not see take hold for a few weeks or months. We don’t know when life will get back to nor­mal, but it will even­tu­al­ly, and if you can con­tin­ue to work on long-term SEO ini­tia­tives, you should. That’s the ide­al answer. The real­is­tic answer is that resources may change dur­ing this cri­sis. A good agency part­ner can help you pri­or­i­tize the ini­tia­tives that will have the biggest impact on your search vis­i­bil­i­ty and cus­tomize your scope of work accordingly.
  • If you’re hav­ing to pause your busi­ness or close loca­tions, work close­ly with your agency to update your Google My Busi­ness pro­file, struc­tured data markup, etc. Doing so cor­rect­ly now will help a return to nor­mal­cy go as smooth­ly as possible.
  • Because more peo­ple are stay­ing at home, con­sid­er how user behav­ior may have changed and, if pos­si­ble, adjust your strat­e­gy. For exam­ple, an e‑commerce site might be see­ing traf­fic to prod­uct pages decrease, but traf­fic from queries rel­e­vant to the blog are still strong, mak­ing it a good time to research and post more infor­ma­tion­al con­tent to your site.
  • Uti­lize your agency to mon­i­tor top-rank­ing com­peti­tors. These sites may be intel­li­gent­ly adjust­ing their strate­gies in cre­ative and unfore­seen ways that might make sense to emulate.
  • One pos­si­ble sil­ver lin­ing you may find is that you now have more space and time to work on those impor­tant but not urgent projects that are some­how always being pushed to the back­burn­er. Think build­ing out site con­tent, refresh­ing blog posts, sys­tem­at­ic con­ver­sion rate opti­miza­tion, and more.
  • One ques­tion we’re help­ing clients answer right now is “Should we con­tin­ue to push out con­tent that isn’t relat­ed to COVID-19?” The answer is “prob­a­bly”, but be mind­ful in pro­mot­ing it. You may be adding in coro­n­avirus-relat­ed con­tent to your con­tent cal­en­dar, and cen­ter­ing your pro­mo­tion around that, but a lot of your “nor­mal” con­tent can still go up as well. Maybe the time­li­ness of your coro­n­avirus con­tent brings peo­ple to the site, but your ever­green con­tent keeps them there.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

  • Antic­i­pate how you would han­dle coro­n­avirus-relat­ed press about your busi­ness if, for exam­ple, one of your employ­ees or cus­tomers were to test pos­i­tive. Make sure that you have a “cri­sis play­book” in place for how you would respond and which chan­nels you would use to share your response.
  • Pay close atten­tion to your social mon­i­tor­ing tools. Peo­ple are also ask­ing a lot of ques­tions like “Is X open?” or “Is X can­celed?”. Being respon­sive and help­ful will fos­ter a pos­i­tive rep­u­ta­tion for your business.
  • In the event that your brand becomes asso­ci­at­ed with COVID-19, and the search result sticks, know what options are avail­able to help mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive impact of your new brand­ed SERP. Bio­gen and its con­fer­ence where the virus spread rapid­ly is a great exam­ple of COVID-19 tak­ing over a brand’s sto­ry, and there are ORM solu­tions out there to help mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive impacts.

We can expect the coro­n­avirus sit­u­a­tion to evolve and have a heavy impact on our soci­ety and econ­o­my for months to come. Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing can be incred­i­bly agile, and we should be pre­pared to be nim­ble in our approach as well.

SOURCE: Go Fish Digital