With the outbreak of COVID-19 shaping up to be a significant health, social and economic crisis of our time, we enter a period of enormous uncertainty in both our professional and personal lives. The past couple of weeks have raised significant questions about how we all should proceed in regards to our businesses and vital livelihoods. 

While we don’t have all the answers in this rapidly evolving situation, there’s opportunity in uncertainty, and it’s more important than ever to reassure your customers with messages of strength, transparency and humility. 

We’re in this together, after all. 

As a full-service marketing agency, we’ve helped our clients survive many crises throughout the years with thoughtful, multi-tiered approaches, and we look at this with the same care. As a valued member of the Fuse family, we would like to offer our support during this time. We’ve also come up with some below advice to get you started. 

1. Evaluate your situation with a calm and rational approach

First of all, deep breath. It’s going to take some time, but consider the implications of coronavirus on your immediate business operations and customer base. Secondly, evaluate what you need to prepare for long-term. Understand that there will be many unknowns, and that’s okay. Thirdly, take stock of your promotional activities and events. But… for the love of all things holy, don’t immediately turn off your marketing and outreach activities. At a time like this, you need to engage with your customers and inspire confidence that you’re working on a solution.

2. Respond to COVID-19 with appropriate measure for your business

Inboxes are already inundated with messages from brands about how they’re handling coronavirus. It’s important to respond, but craft your message based specifically on how your business interacts with customers and staff. For example, a food service business will have different things to say than a remote IT business. 

Decide how you’re going to conduct business and what procedures and alternatives you have in place, and what customers can do to continue to do business with you.

Once you have your message, consistency is key. Disseminate your message across your channels. And don’t forget about internal communications, too. It’s crucial to reassure your staff that measures are being taken, even if it’s not clear yet how things will evolve.

Add a section to the front page of your website and/or a landing page that clearly and succinctly communicates your plan to users.

3. Monitor and analyse your PPC campaigns

While people are distracted by the current situation, primary conversions such as Sales and Leads may be down, but this isn’t cause for immediate panic. We have observed across a lot of verticals that people are searching less (unless you happen to be a toilet paper brand!). Lower search volumes mean fewer impressions, and therefore lower clicks. Depending on your bid strategies, this means that your campaigns aren’t necessarily using their full daily budget. 

Before you rush to turn off campaigns in hopes of saving money, check your ad spend usage! We’ve noticed for many campaigns, ad spend is declining directly alongside impressions. Turning off campaigns and snuffing out the rest of your digital marketing could cause havoc later trying to rebuild your conversion data to where it once was.  

At Fuse, we can analyse your campaign data to help guide your decisions on digital campaigns. We can address the ad copy and search terms that are getting more clicks and find ways to optimise your spend. If you are deciding to reduce campaign budget or pause campaigns, we can help determine what to prioritise.

4. Create compelling content

With everyone being encouraged to practice social distancing and those coming back from overseas having to self-isolate for two weeks, the number of hours that people are spending online has jumped rapidly, which presents an opportunity for a big digital push. Although, in an already cluttered online arena, it’s important that your content can cut through the noise and make an impact. Now is the time to refresh your social media and content strategies to capitalise on people spending more time online. 

We hope the above activities will help your business thrive during the undoubtedly difficult times that lay ahead. And if you’re in need of any marketing assistance, we can figure out agile solutions to help you reach your shifting goals.

Wishing you all the very best.

-The Fuse Team