The target audience has changed, as well as its needs, behavior, and volume of demand. Thus, the one who analyzes new realities and quickly adjusts to them is a winner. Read below how a competent approach will help businesses quickly adapt. We will also analyze misconceptions that can be costly in the current situation.
Opportunity to wisely allocate budgets and not cut them
Sometimes it may seem that it is better to stop all activities, and cut budgets. But when you are waiting, other companies will fight and win your market share. Take a page out of large brands’ books that have not left the stage. They are using the current situation for promotion and other activities. For example, fast food restaurants that were closed during the quarantine but continued to do their marketing activities and developed their mobile apps for orders.
Burger King motivated consumers to stay at home during the quarantine and be “couch potatriots.”
At the beginning of the quarantine, McDonald’s launched a social campaign and “split the logo.” According to the company, a short distance for a while will help bring people together
When you count money it means that you spend it more efficiently. To do so you need to know what promotional methods and channels to focus on. Here you will need analytics. It will give an understanding of things that work right now and the ones that simply waste money.
For example, by connecting end-to-end analytics, you can easily see the cost recovery of campaigns. And you can invest in a way that will guarantee benefits. This is especially relevant for a business that does not have considerable budgets. It is critically important for it to be sure that every cent invested in promotion works.
Example of end-to-end analytics report. You don’t have to be a specialist or to have special skills to understand this report and discover channels that perform better
Here are just a few valuable insights you that you will get due to analytics:
- ads that work better and the ones that do not work at all — you can stop the last one, and invest the budget in successful campaigns;
- what and how people are searching for in the new conditions;
- the cost recovery of investments in marketing — down to the keyword, if you have end-to-end analytics connected.
Strengthen positions in contextual advertising
We can say that contextual advertising is now at its peak. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on this type of promotion. But keep in mind that most likely, the cost per click will increase in some niches due to the growing demand. In these conditions, it is especially important to:
- determine the effectiveness of ads and invest in the ones that bring profit;
- find out unobvious keywords that bring calls and requests so you can successfully promote for a lower price;
- analyze which products are in demand now and launch campaigns on them.
Understanding of the interests of the audience and its representatives
During the last months, people changed their priorities in products. It is important to consider and adapt ad campaigns so you won’t waste the budget but spend it as effectively as possible.
A simple example from the sphere where online sales are growing, as has shown the experience of our partners. Imagine two furniture stores. The first uses analytics and sees in reports that now chairs and tables are especially popular. The company decreases advertising rates for wardrobes and invests in goods that are in demand.
The second store based on past experience considers that cabinets are always popular. And continues to promote them as if nothing had happened. All in all, the ads launched by the first store are more current so this store will have more potential customers.
Example of a product that had a sharp growth of the demand
By analyzing keywords you can:
- launch ads on popular products;
- set up campaigns for analogs of products that are in demand, etc.
- optimize the website for current search queries;
- promote cheaper analogs of popular products.
The audience has changed as well. That’s why it’s important to analyze who your customer is now. You can do so, for example, by listening to audio recordings of calls. Thus, you determine the gender, approximate age, and you can also collect semantics that you may not have encountered before.
Testing new approaches and hypothesis
Nowadays experts often recommend actively testing new approaches:
- speed up the experiments at least twice;
- test new hypothesis every day;
- contact the target audience to provide common experiments.
You will also need analytics here as only with its help can you determine whether the experiment is successful. Keep in mind that something that did not work before can now show an excellent result.
Test creatives, keywords, funnels. Consider all conversions: calls, orders from instant messengers, online chats. These customers will differ from your ordinary ones in their behavior, the time that they spend on the website, and how fast they will make a purchase. Insert end-to-end analytics to start tracking the revenue for each campaign considering attribution and make improvements at every stage.
Example of the end-to-end analytics report that displays the conversion to calls
Increase of the service quality
Analytics should concern not only conversions but also how your sales reps process requests. Make sure that the user gets the maximum online: full consultation and a convenient way of communication.
Even if you don’t have lots of money to attract new customers, you can always work with current ones. What can you do:
- create useful newsletters and analyze which topics are more popular among users;
- answer calls, and messages in chats faster;
- ask to evaluate the quality of service and tell what the customer liked and what didn’t.
You can very easily evaluate the quality of service using audio recordings of calls. Pay attention to such moments:
- how long the sales rep picked up the phone;
- whether he is good enough in the moments when it is necessary to describe the features of a product or service;
- how polite he is;
- whether he named all your advantages — our client had a case when deals were as sales reps didn’t mention them.
Listening to calls will also help to test different scripts for the current situation.
Conclusion
- Do not cut budgets, but invest in things that really work. Otherwise, the market will be divided without you, and it will be extremely difficult to regain your previous positions.
- Discover insights about the new market situation. Analyze who and how to google in your niche, what products are in demand now. This will help to bet on the most relevant positions.
- Look for keywords that people are using right now. The ones that your competitors have not yet taken into account. So you can successfully promote at a lower price.
- Listen to audio recordings of calls. This will give several bonuses at once. You will understand who represents your changing audience. You can test various scripts. Evaluate the quality of your sales reps’ work and improve it.
