It’s been roughly two months now since the deadly Coronavirus started to flip our lives upside down. The outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, is having a tremendous impact on countries, communities, and businesses worldwide. During this time, it’s pertinent to stay calm, safe, and explore smart digital marketing strategies to keep your business going during COVID-19.

Or would you like to allow your business to die with the Coronavirus? Probably NO.

In this article, we’re going to discuss the different digital marketing strategies and opportunities that you can leverage on during this COVID-19 outbreak and increase your digital marketing ROI.

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Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses During Coronavirus

Without a doubt, these are perilous times; the world is anxious, but the worst thing you can do is allow panic to take over everything, including your digital marketing strategy. Maintaining your business visibility can help you continue creating revenue, which is especially important during potential economic downtimes. 

Here are some digital marketing strategies to help your business during this lockdown:

1. Connect With Your Customers on Social Media During a Critical Moment

Unarguably, we’re all dealing with the significant impact the COVID-19 outbreak has unleashed on our lives whether you’ve tested positive or not. We’re lockdown in our homes and our kids aren’t in school anymore. We’re all taking precautionary measures. We can’t visit our friends and loved ones. We can’t even eat at our favorite restaurants or go out to see movies or watch sports.

Certainly, all minor conveniences but jarring nonetheless. This is the time to show empathy to others and help out where you can. Also, this is a time we all need to be sensitive — and not too pushy — but it’s a great opportunity for your brand to stand out tall during a difficult time. More people than ever before are on social media now while stuck at home, browsing their feed for updates and trying to stay connected in a suddenly isolated nation.

You can also, use your business to give back to the community in any way you can. And promote your good deeds with social media marketing to help build your brand.

2. Make Sure Your Business Can Be Found Online

Did you know that more people are online right now than in their cars or walking the sidewalks? Search traffic has increased significantly over the past week and will continue to climb as we hunker down. We’re all glued to our devices looking for real-time updates within our community. We’re also constantly looking for entertainment and ways to pass the time. Perhaps, for many, that includes indulging in online shopping.

Anything online right now will be consumed 50 times more it used to be. Hence, this is not the time to be hidden online. You should be using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to accelerate to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) so your business can be easily found. This should never be a time for a business to go into a shell and poke out your head every few days to see if the sun has risen on the other side.

3. Focus on Customer Service and Reputation Management

Brands like Facebook, Google, Coca-Cola, KFC are creating content hubs to keep customers informed during this pandemic.

Are you going to sorrow all day?

What then can you do?

Small to medium businesses can utilize blogs to create engaging content that is relevant to their industry or even as a means to update their customers as to the measures being taken at their business.

You can start NOW. Now is the time to create and provide your customers with informative content. Reassure customers and let them know what you’re doing to help them throughout this precarious time

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is a Smart Marketing Approach Now

With more people at home in front of their computer and phone, it’s a great opportunity for businesses to utilize PPC marketing to connect and engage with their customers and gain a competitive advantage. Oh, and it’s a great chance to save some dollars within your digital marketing budget. On average, cost-per-clicks have decreased by over 6 percent across all verticals since last week.

And it will interest you to know that CPC is likely to continue to decrease in the coming week, reducing the amount of money an advertiser pays a publisher for every ad click. That is an offer for your business to use this opportunity to scoop up that lost market share from others pulling back during this time.

5. Stay Ahead or Jump In Front of Your Competition

As may have known, SEO helps your business increase organic traffic to your website and skyrocket you past your competition. Who doesn’t want o be on the front page of Google SERPs and at the top of the list?

Your business must be there so that when your customers search for certain keywords you’re the company they end up calling. However, to climb to the top of the SERPs takes time and strategic optimization strategies. If you fail to continue to optimize your website and content daily, you stand a chance to lose valuable ground in the search results and your freefall could cost your business thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

What you don’t want to do at this time is halt an SEO campaign. That can be a huge mistake for your business. And you will pay with your leads and revenue- as they will suffer. But if others choose to retreat on SEO, it’s also a perfect time for your business to push even harder to outsmart your competitors.

Importantly, prepare your business for the bounce back rush. As we have seen, the coronavirus outbreak should fade (just as it has in China) after a few months. That’s when the status quo returns and consumers’ spending habits stabilize. You have to realize that SEO is more of a long-term digital marketing strategy.

What you do today for your SEO campaign will impact your organic search traffic significantly two months from now. Discontinuing your SEO campaign now could have a detrimental impact on your revenue potential two months from now when the coronavirus fades into history.

6. Provide Special Offer To Your Customers

During this critical time, you have the opportunity to show support for your customer base by offering special discounts that will keep your revenue coming. Identify and analyze your product-market fit and create a special offer for it.

Many people are at home surfing the internet, looking for discounts to save money during a time of unrest. It’s a great way to connect and engage with your customers and keep a steady stream of revenue that will keep your doors open.

You can launch out your special offers through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and social media advertising. 

7. Local SEO is now More Relevant; So Are Your Online Reviews

We’ve all cut down our travel and are staying close to home. In the odd times when we do leave our house, we’re looking for nearby destinations for services and supplies. So you want to ensure that your business is deploying local SEO strategies to optimize your website for “near me” or “nearby” searches.

You want customers in your locality to be able to easily find you online so they turn to you first for their needs. At a time when we’re all looking for more convenience, this allows your business to provide support during a rare time for families.

Also, another way to improve your local SEO during this time is to not forget about the importance of adding positive reviews. During the coronavirus, online reputation management is as important as ever before because this is a great time to connect with your target audience and show empathy during a chaotic time.

To provide the right service or product for people during this unsolicited time — when they need it most during this COVID-19 pandemic — is likely to be rewarded with a glowing review.

8. Be Ready to Pivot as a Business and Inform Your Customers

In a dynamic situation, your business should also be dynamic. This is a time that you should find new ways to connect with your customers like never before. It shows empathy and keeps your business relevant at a time when it may have been affected by people staying at home. For instance, restaurants are knocked off right now because customers aren’t dining in.

You should make sure you’re offering free delivery services. Just the other day, a local restaurant emailed offering three ways to get their food into their customers’ hands: delivery, curbside ordering, and parking lot pickup.

Also, let your customers know through all of your online platforms that you’ve increased your sanitary practices and how you’re doing that specifically.

But other businesses should pivot right now, too, as we stay in. Gyms and fitness hub have closed their doors to curb the spread of the coronavirus, but why not offer online workout classes right now? The dentist could offer online consultations. Grocery stores should offer free curbside pickup. And all of these opportunities presented can be boosted with strategic social media campaigns.

9. Focus on Your Strategy Don’t Fall Victim to the Panic Move

How many toiletries do you have at your house right now? If your answer to this is a closet full, you’re likely one of the people who flocked to the store when the coronavirus hysteria started to gain grounds. However, that’s not how you want to react if you want to implement a smart digital marketing strategy. You never want to make a panic move. You always want to use metrics and analyze all of the data you have available before making a decision.

Knee-jerk reactions usually don’t end well in digital marketing. Take caution when quickly reacting to a sudden shift in the economy or market.

10. Use this Luxury of Time to Finish Your Digital To-Do Lists

Now that you’re not commuting to the office or taking in-person meetings, your schedule has likely freed up some time for you. Those marketing items that may have fallen through the cracks and been overlooked can now be addressed.

Perhaps your business website demands a redesign. Primegate Digital’s website design professionals can overhaul your website in less than two months all while working remotely. This is also a great time to have a conversion rate optimization specialist perform a CRO audit of your website to ensure your call-to-actions (CTAs) are turning leads into customers. SEO cannot be left out. It’s an ideal time to do an SEO audit of your website to ensure that your optimization strategies are delivered at its best.

How Major Brands and Business Are Marketing During the Coronavirus

It will shock you to know that not just small businesses have suffered during COVID-19. Major brands and large companies have also taken major blows to their revenue streams and certainly won’t be hitting their financial goals by the end of 2020.

But they, too, are adjusting on the tides. Most big brands are using a smart marketing approach and advertising campaigns right now to promote positivity and relay important messages. Let’s review five businesses that are getting it right at a time like this:

KFC

They recently took to Instagram to share a smart social distancing video campaign while promoting their chicken. The Instagram post read: “We’re committed to providing easy and safer access to all your Kentucky Fried favorites, which is why we’re ensuring that once the chicken leaves our fryer, the only hands to touch it are yours. Come by our drive-thrus, order ahead or get free, contactless delivery” 

 

Google

The world’s largest search engine has taken responsibility as well. Google has also used a smart, timely marketing approach during the coronavirus.

Google’s marketing idea during COVID-19 was to spread knowledge about how to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Google took to Instagram to promote the DO THE FIVE campaign by the World Health Organization. The Instagram post reads: “Do these five simple things to help stop coronavirus (COVID-19). DO THE FIVE and share this to get the word out”.

 

Coca-Cola

They used compassion and empathy as part of a smart marketing strategy during the coronavirus. Coca-Cola posted on its Instagram account recently a “together we can” message to everyone and the caption reads “Together we can do more than anyone of us alone. ❤️”

 

Apple

As part of its COVID-19 marketing campaign, Apple took to Instagram to with “we’re staying home to stay safe” video post that portrays empathy, care, and togetherness. The post reads “Community Brief 29: at Home
We might be at home, but we can still come together.”

 

Toyota

Here’s another big brand, also showed empathy and smart marketing during the coronavirus. Toyota took to Instagram recently with their “Stay Home, Stay Safe” campaign to enlighten the public on the importance of staying home. The caption reads “Stay home for those who cannot”

These examples have shown us businesses that refuse to bury their heads despite the pandemic. Hopefully you, too, can grab some insights from these smart marketing approaches during the coronavirus and apply the same to your business.

Importantly, be sure to adjust your strategies and marketing to adapt to the times. Meet your customers where they are right now (and that’s mostly at home and online). Find a way to push and give your business the best chance to stay relevant by making your business website easily found online through a strategic SEO strategy.

No doubt, these are challenging times for everyone. But your business can still flourish if you’re willing to try a new approach and not pull back on your marketing during a critical time for your company to show compassion and empathy. Now is the time to connect with your customers like never before and not separate from them.

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If you have any questions about how Primegate Digital’s full-service digital marketing agency can help your business grow, please contact us online or Call/WhatsApp +2347039686407

Conclusion

This is a frightening time, but you need to think about the long term effects that this could have on your business if you put a stop to all of your marketing efforts.

We encourage you at this time to stay active online, answer your customer’s queries, and let them know that you’re still there — that this is temporary.

We will get through this together. Stay safe.

Digital marketing is continuously on the increase, and so are customers’ expectations of personalized digital interactions aimed at their specific needs. Understanding how to measure and improve digital marketing ROI has become more crucial.

Currently, to meet those expectations, 98% of CMOs now combine their traditional and digital marketing efforts, including key technology investments in the areas of social marketing and digital commerce.

Irrespective of the digital technologies deployed, generating revenue remains fundamental for any business. This suggests that marketers need easy ways of determining if their efforts are generating revenue. Understanding what to how to measure and improve your digital marketing ROI is the first step to achieving this objective.

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Return on investment (ROI) in digital marketing “measures the efficiency of marketing effort to certain key performance indicators.”

In this article, I’d be sharing how you can measure and improve your digital marketing ROI.

How to Measure Digital Marketing ROI 

Below are digital marketing ROI to look out for and how to measure and improve them.

1. Conversion Rate

A conversion is regarded as an event that is tracked and recorded when a campaign goal or interaction is complete. 

Conversion rate is regarded as the percentage of website visitors that completed your set goal (a conversion) to the total number of people that could have converted. In digital (online) marketing, your conversion rate does not just equate sales. It can be the number of downloads or the number of people who subscribed to your mailing list.

By Calculation, the conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. For instance, if an eCommerce site receives 2000 website visitors in a month and has 500 sales, the conversion rate would be 500 divided by 2000, or 25%.

A high conversion rate implies that the digital marketing campaign was successful.

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2. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost per acquisition (CPA) in digital marketing is the total measure of how much it costs an advertiser to acquire one paying customer. It is used when evaluating campaign outcomes as it lets the digital marketer understand which digital channel, vendor, or ad is driving the most cost-efficient performance. While the conversion rate is useful to understand what has been effective at converting your target audience, the CPA provides an in-depth understanding of cost-efficiency.

By Calculation, the conversion rate is the Total Cost divided by Conversion. For instance, if you have spent NGN 50,000 on Facebook Ads and it has driven 50 conversions, then your CPA would be NGN 10,000.

Once you define the CPA for all vendors, the targeting within each vendor, and which ads are performing the strongest, you can then, at a very granular level, optimize your campaign spend effectively to ensure you are getting the most efficient performance out of the budget spent.

READ ALSO: How To Target Wealthy People With Facebook Ads

3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is one of the most vital metrics to track at any growing company. 

CLTV is the total worth a customer is to a business over the entire period of their relationship. It’s an important metric to consider in every digital marketing strategy. Remember that it costs less to keep existing customers than it does to acquire new customers. Hence increasing the value of your existing customers is a great way to drive business growth.

If the CLTV of an average coffee shop customer is NGN 10,000 and it costs more than NGN 10,000 to acquire a new customer (advertising, marketing, offers, etc.) the coffee shop could be losing money unless it pares back its acquisition costs.

By Calculation, CLTV = (average value of the purchase) X (number of times the customer will buy each year) X (average length of the customer relationship in years)

When you know your customer lifetime value, you can improve it to grow your business.

4. Revenue on Ad Spend (ROAS)

In the simplest form, Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) is a marketing metric that measures the amount of revenue your business earns for each dollar it spends on advertising.

ROAS helps businesses evaluate which digital strategies are working and how they can improve future advertising efforts.

By calculation, it is a percentage of revenue generated divided by the total amount spent in the campaign. For example, a company spends NGN 200,000 on an online advertising campaign in a single month. In this month, the campaign results in revenue of NGN1,000,000. Therefore, the ROAS is a ratio of 5 to 1 (or 500 percent) as NGN1,000,000 divided by NGN200,000 = NGN 5.

The higher your ROAS, the better!

5. Lead Close Rate

Lead conversion rate monitors the percentage of your leads that end up converting to a sale.

This metric offers your company valuable insight into how well they are at converting leads into real-time sales. To calculate the lead conversion rate, you compare the number of leads converted to opportunities in a period, with the total number of leads generated.

For example, if you had 1000 leads that were created in December, and you had 180 leads converted to opportunities in March, then your lead conversion rate would be 180 / 1000 = 18%.

It is very necessary to monitor the number of leads that eventually turns out to sales.

What then after you track and measure your digital marketing campaign ROI?

• Identify and define your goals early on
• Use KPIs that are in direct alignment with your goals
• Test different targeting, offers, creative, frequency, and messaging. 
• Identify and seize vital opportunities for improvement

See also: 25 Smart Instagram Marketing Strategy that Actually Works

ROI Using Digital Marketing Tactics

Discussed above are some general metrics that you can use to evaluate the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

However, it’s necessary to note that the metrics you use to measure your campaigns will ultimately depend on which strategy you are using in your campaigns.

The metrics that you use to evaluate email marketing ROI are not the same as those you might use for social media campaigns.

Always bear in mind that, the metrics that you use to measure and improve ROI on different digital marketing channels are informed by your campaign goals and objectives.

With that in mind, here is a quick list of metrics that you can use to measure and also insight on how to improve digital marketing ROI based on your strategy:

• Email – Click-through rate, bounce rate, open rate, conversions, unsubscribe rate, and leads acquired.
• Social Media – Engagement rates, conversions, leads acquired, clicks and click-through rate, and new fans or followers.
• Landing Pages – Traffic, unique visitors, total page views, returning visitors, time spent on a page, actions taken, and conversions.
• Blogs – Traffic, clicks, unique visitors, returning visitors, time spent on a page, actions taken, and conversions.

4 Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing ROI

Once you start evaluating your digital marketing ROI, the insights will inspire you on key areas to improve. Highlighted below are few tips for improving your ability to both measure ROI and boost your company’s bottom line:

1. Identify and Define your Goals Early On.

As we categorically stated above in the ROI measurement section, you need to know what the goals of your campaign are before you can begin to measure and improve digital marketing ROI. If your goals are unclear, then there’s a greater possibility that you might not be deploying accurate metrics to monitor your ROI.

Conventionally, the first step in measuring and improving your digital marketing return on investment is identifying clear goals that allow you to achieve objective results.

Avoid hazy and loosely defined goals. A good example is “increase awareness” or “create more conversions.” Rather, make sure that your goals are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Ensure that all the goals you set for digital marketing are SMART.

It is fine to start with a vague goal and then make it SMARTer. For example, let’s say that your goal for a given campaign is to increase website traffic. You need to make it specific and measurable as much as you can.

For Instance–  if converting 30% of email subscribers into clients is your campaign goal. Then, you need to set a time frame. Hence, adding a timeline like “in the quarter (Q) 2” or “in 9 months” ensures you have an objective to complete your goal.

As for attainable and relevant, this depends on your particular campaign. Ensure that you are choosing a measurement that’s achievable in the time frame you’ve set out yourself.

Also, make sure that whatever goal you’ve chosen is relevant and in sync with your overall objectives and the digital marketing campaign in progress.

Developing SMART goals for each campaign before you implement the strategy is a great way to make sure you’re on the right track for success. Without clearly defined goals in place, you won’t be able to measure your ROI properly. And if you can’t measure ROI then you can’t find ways to improve it.

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2. Use KPIs that are in direct alignment with your goals.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are the quantifiable metrics or ways that you track and measure your progress. The most important part of setting a KPI is defining what to evaluate.

Once you have clearly defined goals, you need to ensure that you’re choosing KPIs that align with it.  KPIs for SEO will be different than KPIs for content marketing or social ads. If you don’t have KPIs in place, you have no way of knowing the impact of your effort and strategy on your goals as well as how close you are to reaching these goals.

When developing your digital marketing KPIs, be sure to keep the following in mind.

Make sure that the KPIs you choose to align with the goals you’ve defined. For instance, if your goal is to increase conversions, you might as well use metrics that deal with sales in your approach to tracking progress toward these conversion-focused goals.

By using KPIs to measure progress, you’ll also be able to see how well you are getting to achieving your goals.

KPIs not only help you measure progress toward your campaign goals. But they also allow you to establish clear expectations for your marketing team.

With KPIs in place, you can avoid any miscommunication or misunderstanding about what your goals are. It also helps your marketing team to know exactly how campaign success will be determined. And help them in finding ways to improve these metrics.

3. Test Different Targeting, Offers, Creative, Frequency, and Messaging.

Testing is a key aspect of improving your digital marketing ROI. 

Test, Test, and Test Again!

This does not only help you improve the performance of individual digital marketing campaigns. But it can also offer you new insights that can be applied to your broader digital marketing strategy.

Also, the only way to discover which elements of your digital marketing campaigns are impacting your success is to test. There is no aspect of digital marketing that cannot be tested.

You can run A/B tests on different areas of your digital marketing campaigns to know which elements deliver the best performance. From email marketing to social media content to PPC ads, every part of your campaigns can benefit from thorough testing.

You must only choose one element of your campaign to test when you perform A/B test. For example, if you’re testing a creative, you might start with a single image. Change the copy for the creative (say video) in one test version and keep the other the same. Then, run each test to see which performs the best.

Only change one element at a time so that you know which variable is impacting performance when performing A/B test.

Once you discover which elements of your campaigns delivered the best performance, you can then deploy strategic changes to both existing and future marketing campaigns. You can implement changes to different campaigns across the board. As this not limited to only the same kinds of the campaign. 

For example, let’s say that you find a certain type of messaging resonates best with your email marketing. You might then not only make changes to your email marketing campaign messaging, but also carry these changes across to other elements of your digital marketing such as PPC ads or Facebook ads.

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4. Identify and Seize Vital Opportunities for Improvement.

Tracking your chosen metrics over time is not just enough. If you want to improve ROI, adjusting your campaigns based on what you find is vital. The data generated is not the most important aspect of your digital marketing campaign measurements. Rather, these essential insights acquired by looking at and analyzing this data generated that will help you grow your brand.

Once you’ve done some experimenting and have continued to track metrics over time, you will begin to notice some trends or areas of opportunity. Hence, you must seize these opportunities to improve. Perform new tests based on what you find to continuously discover new ways to make your campaigns even better.

For instance, let’s say that you are using conversions by the device as one of your metrics. In tracking this metric over time, you find that certain demographics of your population, such as younger age groups, prefer using mobile devices. Sequel to that insight, if you want to improve ROI by boosting conversions on these devices, you might consider tailoring your messaging and offers on mobile campaigns to appeal to this segment of your target population.

Furthermore, other factors you might look at when analyzing your data and looking for new opportunities in the different channels that you’re using for campaigns. And also, the time of day or day of the week that people tend to engage and convert. With these vital elements monitored, it will help you better optimize when you publish content marketing or launch ads as part of your digital marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

As you can see there are lots of benefits with effective Digital Marketing ROI measurement. You won’t get it right every time.  However, the only way to improve your digital marketing campaigns is to know where you stand with your existing campaign.

Remember that the metrics you use in measuring your ROI will greatly depend on your goals and the channel.  And make sure that your goals are SMART- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

We hope you’ve found this article helpful.

If you need help or guidance in improving your digital marketing, simply Contact Us. We’d be happy to assist.

What does productivity mean to you? And why do you need to know about these 20 free online tools to boost your productivity and efficiency in 2020? Admit it or not, we are all experts at procrastination.

As 21st century entrepreneurs, the digital age has created a myriad of distractions.

However, technology has made it easier for us to achieve success in our business goals and objectives amidst these distractions.