The majority of commercial shops are in the state of shutting down across the country due to the spread of the Novel Coronavirus or Covid19. PPC advertising and digital marketing also changed overnight due to this pandemic. This situation will require advertisers to be brave, creative, and patient. Here, we are discussing some tips to help you better manage your campaigns during this crucial time.

Review your Marketing Spend

This is the best time to re-evaluate your marketing budgets. Review budget vs spend to find the unused funds and apply that fund to the campaigns that need it most. The most important metric for evaluating the success of the campaign should be the return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS). Consider shifting budget only to the relevant products or services during this emergency time. This helps the campaign to provide the maximum result. The fastest way to drain your PPC budget is to set display bids and corresponding campaign budgets too high and let them run without frequent optimization and review. To free up your account management task, consider setting lifetime or monthly spend limits, instead of daily budgets.

Monitor your Search Behavior

The COVID-19 pandemic has made retailers adapting to home delivery or online models, much of the workforce staying home, people are looking for clear, specific information about where, how, and when to get the things they need. Therefore, you can make use of specific ad copies, ad extensions where applicable to communicate benefits like free delivery, fast delivery, curbside pick-up, porch drop-off, etc.

Negative Keywords

There are a lot of major and minor changes in user queries that are triggering your ads. Because of which you must approach your campaigns in two different ways:

1. In a reactive manner where you review search terms and display campaigns for COVID-19 keywords and content in real-time.
2. React proactively by predicting which terms will trigger your ads and create negative keyword lists that can be used across all campaigns.

You can exclude keywords such as COVID, Coronavirus, Epidemic, Pandemic, etc if they are not relevant to your line of business.

Reconsider your Marketing Channels

Now that everyone is within the comforts of their home, people are consuming more news-related content, videos, and using online communication tools more than ever. Messaging on Facebook and its apps, Messenger and WhatsApp, have increased by 50% of its usage since the outbreak. Before the pandemic, users spent more time in WhatsApp and live streams, the messenger platform showed a decrease in ad revenue. However, with more people returning to Facebook and Messenger, there’s an opportunity for advertisers to increase their market share. Reaching more people at the top of the funnel with PPC and paid social media ads is an opportunity worth grasping.

Prepare for Normality

The tips discussed above are just quick fixes to ensure your campaigns are not affected negatively during the crisis. At a point in the near future, the restrictions will be lifted, albeit in parts. Consumer behavior will change to what it was and some sense of normality will occur. At that time, you will need to evaluate if things remain the same pre-outbreak if not, you will have to make adjustments to ensure that it is better than what was before. Therefore, be prepared for the future.

We’re all in for change over the next few months – both online and offline. While you’re stuck inside, keep an eye on your PPC accounts and keep your account’s performance healthy. If you require expert support with your PPC campaign during this outbreak, you will need a PPC agency you can trust.

‍