It’s been over a month now since the Coronavirus hit our nation and turned our world upside down. From staying at home and practicing social distancing at public places, to wearing masks and sanitizing our hands multiple times a day, Coronavirus is making us do many things we never expected.
Our businesses are suffering drastically. A quick look at recent reports from top research agencies is enough to leave you in shock. While the pandemic has changed a lot of things negatively, it has brought to us some new opportunities in terms of online businesses and marketing. Here’s how you can fine-tune your marketing activities amidst COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Be a Little Generous: Even the world’s top marketing agencies have lost thousands of clients. In these tough times, when nothing seems to work, observe the trends in what is happening around you. When businesses are losing money big time, consider offering them premium features of your services for free. It may take you longer to reach the break-even point, but that’s thought process you may want to set aside for now.
Free trials are a great way to approach new customers. The bulk of free-trial prospects doesn’t convert eventually, but more free trials certainly mean you would end up having more paying customers. Obviously, once you begin giving away more for free, your regular signups will go down, but you will gradually observe a rise in your traffic.
• Paid Ads are Now More Affordable than Ever: This is one of the latest trends you can take advantage of. Paid ads are becoming more and more affordable. This is obvious because large display advertising networks make money via an auction system. They want SMEs to take the cost per click (CPC) for advertisements up and this causes large corporations to spend more money on the advertisements.
These days, there are not enough small businesses willing to spend on ads. Therefore, the competition is less and consequently, the cost per click for the ads is low. The pandemic is causing us to spend more time on the web, which means, web traffic is high, but with fewer advertisers – another reason for the low cost per click.
While conversion rates are going down in some sectors, they are nowhere near that of CPCs. Taking into account the global as well as industry-specific average, paid ads are now producing much more ROI. n fact, there are businesses, who have seen an increase of 71% in ROI during the time of this pandemic.
Consider paid ads now if you haven’t tried them yet. Also, consider ramping up your paid marketing efforts to make the most of this advantageous situation.
• Consider Offering Payment Plans: As mentioned earlier, conversion rates are generally down across many industries. While the rate has gotten better for some sectors, it’s still very low for a few. That said, this is a solution that can boost the conversion rate by an average of 12%.
Businesses selling products/services online can consider offering payment plans by collaborating with an established firm. Payment plans reduce the financial burden on your customers, especially in the short run.
This doesn’t mean that you should essentially be an e-commerce business to take advantage of payment plans. For instance, if you are a consulting service provider, consider accepting payment over a period of one year or more. In case you are offering digital courses or selling ebooks, you can roll out a monthly installment plan.
It can be an excellent way to increase conversion rates, particularly when most people are unwilling to spend a lot up front.
• Offer Educational Based Courses: Selling educational based courses to your audience is a great opportunity now. The unemployment rate is high and more professionals are on the lookout for new opportunities. Most of the opportunities are tech based in which many people don’t have any experience.
Going back to college can be time-consuming as well as bank breaking. So, where can people learn while social distancing is a norm? A website offering online educational based courses seems to be a plausible option. You may consider selling your own courses that people might be looking for.
• Diversify Geographic Regions You Get Traffic From: While coronavirus pandemic is a global concern, some countries are way more affected than many others.
Both the spread and containment of coronavirus will affect your traffic. Therefore, you should diversify the geographic regions you get traffic from. International SEO can help you get more traffic quickly while remaining less dependent on the economy of a single country.
By translating and localizing your content, you can see your traffic grow quickly. It may take 6 months or more to observe expected results in countries where the competition is high, but you can expect quicker results in regions with less competition.
Conclusion
The harsh truth is that the situation may get worse in the coming months. So, you need to keep yourself well prepared in advance. Personally, you can stay at home and practice social distancing. But, from a career or business standpoint, you can still make a huge difference. Now with more time than ever on our hands, let’s use it to make the best out of this situation and try to capitalize on opportunities in front of us all!