It is not new news that we see changes in the way we live brought to us by this pandemic. There have been a lot of changes both in the way we live and how we do business. This new threat to our livelihood took hold in the United States and around the world.
Industries like food and tourism have been deeply hit by this pandemic. And we have yet to see when this situation will be remedied. But for now all we can do is make sure our businesses remain afloat during these trying times.
If not, you will need to re-evaluate some parts of the business whether on costs or looking for new customers online. You can also look at niche opportunities where your products would fit. Your digital marketing campaigns should take the forefront during these times to give you that edge against your competition.
To make sure that your digital marketing campaigns deliver results, you need to ask yourself three main questions:
1. Are there any behavioral changes when it comes to how your customers interact with your category?
2. Are there marketing trends you can capitalize on?
3. Do you have enough budget to run certain campaigns?
After looking at these details, you must then asses whether you are willing to sacrifice profitability to increase sales volume or forego some of your sales volume to keep your profit margin.
Here are some ways to help you assess the situation then create both your marketing campaigns and paid campaigns. It doesn't matter if you are well versed in digital marketing or not. We will do our best to make use of understandable digital marketing terms so this can also serve as a guide for all our small business owners.
If your main focus is your sales voloume, you would first need to know where your current sales volumes are. This will show you how much the current situation has impacted your numbers.
1. Check your previous years' data and look for peaks and dips in the data. It's also better if you have conversion trackers set in Google Ads and Google Analytics -- these would give you an idea how much your paid ads campaigns affect your volume.
2. Check channels movement (online and offline), if there are any changes.
3. Check if your social media engagements affected online presence and sales.
4. Focus your efforts on channels where you have a bigger potential for sales. This will also help you pivot your business to maybe a subscription based service rather than a retail one.
After you have checked all these, it's now time to create your strategy. When focusing on improving sales volumes, the most important metric to measure should be your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This will indicate how much you need to budget on your ad sets to meet your sales target. For example, if you are running Google Ads campaigns, you can track purchases as conversions and then see how much money a given campaign, ad group, ad or keyword has produced. It could sometimes be tricky and you may need a developer to check this out.
If you are focusing on your business' profitability. You will have to make sure all components are running smoothly and efficiently. After focusing on the same trends indicated above, you will then have to check your budgets. This time, instead of focusing on the total budget, you will need to check on the individual ad sets which provide you with less conversions.
Your searchability and conversions depend on different factors and trends that shape up consumer behavior. There are times you will need to check if there's a need to change your keywords. You may need to look at different tools that will help you address this. Google trends provides you a free tool to check out trends.
At Klick, we take your sales seriously. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
