An Update On How To Adapt Your Advertising During the Covid19 Crisis
The market has changed. Google SERP has seen large shifts in the way people search during this crisis. What people are searching for has changed, and most interesting is the fact that when people search has changed. As the coronavirus pandemic dominates our concerns, news, politics, and economy, it’s dominating our Google searches. In fact, currently, COVID-19 related searches are now the most popular searches on Google, far exceeding searches about other news, weather, politics, Google, Facebook, Amazon, or even porn. You need to make sure that your Ads are showing when these people are now looking for your product.
Google has released the Google Trends Coronavirus Hub to help track these emerging searches as well as other breakout searches that users are taking as they respond to developing news in the world. Advertisers should review these search trends regularly and be prepared to add new negative keywords to their campaigns to prevent wasting their budgets online. There is some good information HERE from Wordstream on how to find your Negative Keywords.
Timing is now very important too. For example with people not searching on their commute because they are working from home and also what they search for changing ie Travel search has fallen off the cliff you need to know when to Join The Party. Have a read of this blog to discover the tool (Google Ads Dimensions tab) to to re-allocate your budget in order to get more visibility during peak hours. Read it HERE
The main lesson is to keep working with your Digital marketing and to maxamise your spend ..... do not just let it run.
Facebook Publishes New Guide on How Advertisers Should Adjust Their Ad Approaches During COVID-19
As businesses seek to navigate this difficult time, adapt media strategies and determine which marketing activities are most worthwhile, gaining an accurate understanding of ad performance is more important than ever. However, a key issue marketers and strategists face when making these adjustments is that many current behaviors depart from the norm. For example, in the US and UK, Gen Z, Gen X and baby boomers all say they’re spending more time checking social media due to concerns around COVID-19 (27%, 29% and 15% more, respectively).2 These shifts in consumer habits may not extend past the current environment, and so it’s important for businesses to evaluate their measurement strategies to ensure that they are gaining a true understanding of the impact of today’s conditions while not developing an inaccurate view of long-term behavior.
What are some key measurement best practices to follow in unusual situations? Below, we briefly cover four strategies for understanding advertising performance during extraordinary circumstances. In our guide, Adapting Your Ad Measurement Strategy for COVID-19 Impact, we explore each in more detail and provide additional resources to help businesses explore the potential effects of different measurement decisions in this time.
1. Simplify your strategy Evaluating your measurement strategy to adapt to today’s conditions does not mean you need to abandon your existing measurement approaches. Rather than changing course completely, consider simplifying your strategy to focus on using your organization’s current key sources of truth. This will enable you to more quickly understand shifts and make media optimizations.
2. Re-evaluate tests designed to inform future decisions With the profound changes happening to people’s day-to-day lives, media performance is often unusual. So, when looking at insights from tests conducted during this time, consider the extent to which current conditions are impacting results. Some findings and best practices may still be able to be generalized and used to inform future business decisions while others may only be applicable now.
3. Use A/B and multi-cell testing to optimize quickly To gain a better understanding of today’s behaviors, consider running quick A/B and multi-cell tests (A/B tests with a holdout). Through measurement and learning, you can assess the impact of making adjustments in areas like audience targeting and creative presentation. This will enable you to rapidly adapt your ads, undertake changes with greater confidence and optimize your strategy for the current environment.
