Whatever the level of your marketing during Coronavirus you will want to know when to ramp it back up again right?
Well, I’ve some great news for you, I’ve got three great tips to help you know when to ramp your marketing back up.
Before you go give these tips a whirl, do ensure you bear in mind three things:
Seasonality – given the highly unique position we are currently in, seasonality may defy normality in some sectors.
These are a guide so do look at other factors too. You can’t beat actually talking to your clients and prospects to get their views on if they are ready to buy.
What country(s) you are operating in. Every country is at different stages of the Coronavirus if you are an international organisation and I’d highly suggest you do this per country where possible.
Here are my two top tips to know when up ramp your digital marketing back up:
Tool One – Google Trends – this is a very handy tool for several tasks but looking at trends and the likely trend going forward is one of them.
How to use – Open the link, pick the country that’s relevant to you and type in either a keyword(s) or phrase. In this example I’ve chosen the UK and best second hand car, I’ve also chosen ‘over the last seven days’
If I didn’t know what the seasonality was normally like I’d also do a search on the same period last year – this way giving me a good indicator of if this year’s figures are off.
Based on this example when I did a search on the same period last year ‘best second hand car’ is down so I know I need to keep a close eye each week for when it comes back.
This free tool will only give you information based on Google’s data, so if you serve an international market that are not users or big users of Google as a search engine this will give you little or no data useful to you.
Tool Two – Google Search Console – this amazing, free tool is underutilised at the best of times by many businesses.
If you don’t have it installed, you will need to do that first (it uses your Google Analytics accounts code). If you already have GA installed you are in luck as it will give you your previous data.
You can see some of your Google Search Console data within Google Analytics (Acquisition / Search Console). However, to use this tool fully for this task, log in to Google Search Console itself
Once logged in and you’ve selected the right property (the website you want to view data for) select Performance.
Look at the impressions* – this is historic data but if you keep a close eye (last 7 days, the day before and the last 28 days) you will start to see if people are starting to search more
This tool is only handy if your website ranks in some form for key terms e.g. ‘best second hand car’ if it doesn’t and you only do other forms of marketing then this tool won’t work that well.
Tool Three – Google Analytics – this should be your friend as a marketer at all times. It’s great to see what content is getting views on your website, how long people are spending and what else they are viewing your website.
Using our own website to give you an example, we saw traffic dip for a little while but impressions remained the same – in the last couple of weeks we’ve seen traffic come back – i.e. people were still looking but only quick searches, now they are settled at home they are picking things back up and starting to do deeper searches and also reach out for quotes etc.
As already mentioned, its key to take a wide look at trends and what’s going on in the market, however, if used correctly these two tools can help add to making informed decisions to ensure you are serving your potential and existing customers at the first opportunity.
I hope these simple tips are useful for your business. We’ve been helping organisations who’ve been affected by Coronavirus both adapt their marketing and maximise their marketing to ensure they are generating profitable sales. If you’d like further help then we’d be happy to chat.
* A link URL records an impression when it appears in a search result for a user. Whether or not the link must actually be scrolled into view or otherwise visible depends on the type of search element that contains the link, as described later
