These extraordinary times are creating enormous challenges for many companies and marketers. That's why we want to share with you relevant recommendations from our digital marketing specialists on what you should keep in mind for your advertising in times of Corona.
But first a blog post by Tobias Zehnder, in which he focuses on what the current situation means for marketing in the short and medium term. Find out what he thinks about relevant developments and specific ideas for a pragmatic approach. This much can be said: rethinking is required.
ADVERTISING
When people spend more time at home, it’s reflected in their media consumption habits as well. YouTube, for example, has seen usage jump by an order of magnitude from 4 to 20 in various European countries. Topics such as cooking, how to be productive and how to stay fit while working from home are seeing the biggest uptick. In the US, Comscore has recorded a steep rise in gaming (+48%), streaming (+38%) and tablet usage (+33%), to name just a few. A cross-sectional panel survey conducted by GlobalWebIndex in 13 countries found that 95% of all respondents said they had greatly increased their media consumption at home, mainly in the form of news, music streaming services and video platforms, and also their digital communication with family and friends via Facebook apps.
For marketers, this means that they can now channel more energy into social media, news sites, video and entertainment platforms, and in general reach users on their smartphones and tablets. If brands roll out campaigns tactfully under these unusual circumstances, respond to the changing needs of consumers and adjust their media mix, they can still create some very successful campaigns.
SEA/E-COMMERCE
Big e-commerce players have greatly upped their media spending in recent weeks to seize on the increase in demand. We advise marketers to update their ad copy accordingly and notify users about the availability of their products and any possible delivery delays. Stores that have been forced to temporarily close should update their site links and callout extensions, and put their location extensions and local campaigns on hold. It’s also worth mentioning that Google My Business lets you change the status to “temporarily closed”. Google’s Customer Match tool also lets you use CRM data integration to target your online marketing content at customers who have tended to be offline buyers in the past. For Mammut, we have taken encrypted CRM data from its brick-and-mortar retail and used it for a digital campaign to draw customer attention to the company’s new online outlet. Another tip: Google Trends makes it relatively easy to research popular products and topics, so that you can integrate them profitably into your campaigns. Our Head of SEA, Sabrina Pantic, and Head of E-Commerce, Fabian Serger, will be happy to answer any questions about SEA and e-commerce.
SEO
Marketers whose normal business has plummeted would be well advised to use the time right now to spruce up their websites and work on things such as page speed, URL structure, user experience and content. Your business will eventually benefit from these improvements, because search engine optimization pays off in the long run. Our SEO experts also recommend that you keep your metadata up to date by drawing attention to special discounts, delivery times and availability. Have your events been canceled or postponed? Then it’s definitely a good idea to update your schema.org structures to ensure postponed or canceled events are displayed correctly. To further optimize the online shopping experience for your users, you should prominently show important information, such as delivery times and conditions, available clothing sizes and product information on your website. And for SEO, embrace your curiosity. Evaluate changes in search and buying habits on Google Trends and Google Analytics to find out which topics you can best integrate into your current campaigns or as extra details on your site. We also recommend our blog post on the importance of page speed and the case study on how the Pfister website was optimized in line with SEO guidelines. Our Head of SEO, Lea Kissling, will be happy to answer any other questions.
SOCIAL
The social media landscape has seen increased use on all channels and messenger services, and most interestingly revealed some exciting performance trends. The need for information, entertainment, stimulation and social bonding is enormous. We recommend that marketers adjust their campaigns and communications activities to include quality content that doesn’t neglect the issue of tact and is sensitive to the current situation, while at the same time approaching users with channel-specific, creative content. This requires perfect-pitch “social listening”. Try to understand the needs of users and reach a new level of brand engagement through storytelling.
These are tough times, and many users are not really in the mood to click through an infinite range of products on shopping sites. So, what better time than the present to set up and optimize shopping feeds for the various social media platforms? In the long term, your company will benefit from selling products and services on high-traffic social media channels. Our Head of Social Media Marketing, Juliane Erler, will be happy to assist you.
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY
Many companies have a tendency to neglect the development of their own martech infrastructure, which is why we recommend that marketers view the current situation as an opportunity and make time for this relevant task now. Demolishing data silos, closing gaps and structuring data to shift the focus toward digital ad channels in the future with the right creative content and media strategies. In other words, focusing on projects that increase the digital maturity of organizations and which allow them to regain better control and ownership of their data. Examples include in-housing the advertising stacks and creating a data warehouse for marketing data, more targeted communication and gaining a bird's-eye view of the various marketing activities. After all, the shift towards digital sales channels we are witnessing right now will be the new normal soon enough. Companies that prepare for these changes by building a solid technical foundation will have a major edge over the competition. If you have questions, feel free to contact our Director Data & Technologies, Dorian Kind
Those recommendations were published in our April issue of The Webrepublican.
