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How To Manage Your PPC Effectively In This Period Of Pandemic

The marketing and advertising world has also come to a standstill with the spread of COVID-19. The recent outbreak created a massive impact on both the real and the digital world. The majority of businesses and firms have shut down all over the world. Many people are suffering from the drawbacks of this situation.

Freelancers and agencies have suffered huge losses and many businesses have pulled the plug on their advertising campaigns. It is time for advertisers to adapt to the situation and be more creative and understanding without losing their cool. We have put together a list of things which you can do to manage your PPC better in this period of time:

• Reiterate messaging and values to align with the current situation: Companies have to shift to promoting those products and services which have higher demand right now. The main trends that are hot in this hour are:

1. Working from Home
2. Social Distancing
3. Family Time
4. Essential and Medical Services
5. Online tutoring or HomeSchooling
6. Streaming services and VoDs

Ifyour product or service be can be associated with or can be modified to fit into one of these areas, shift into a temporary plan to promote these initiatives.

Businesses may also try and shift into virtual services or virtual consulting and provide online workshops or webinars.

All active campaigns must be reviewed and see if the messaging still fits the current environment, for example:

1. Review CTAs like “Visit us in-store” and revise
2. Display and social ads images which promote people in groups or touching
3. Add outdoor pickup information
4. Include detailed shipping information with benefits like free, fast, etc
5. Hours of operation and any deviation from the normal services
6. Your company’s response to the virus – a quote or messaging

Though it is fruitful to use some of these messaging in the primary ad copy, we also recommend that you shouldn’t forget to fully utilize Ad extensions such as site links and call-outs to convey the information.

Retaining a minimum brand presence is crucial and continue to feed the upper funnel because it may be harder to recover later after losing momentum. Though it is evident that the situation needs to be acknowledged and a softer sales approach is recommended.

• Change in Search Behavior: Though people are staying at home and maintaining social distancing they are more active online. They are still searching and researching their areas of interest, making purchase decisions and they continue to live their lives online for the time being. Communication about services that can be delivered virtually and delivery schedules for the same is very important. Ad copies orAd extensions communicating benefits like free delivery, door to door pick-up, contactless drop-off, etc. should be used.

• Negative Keywords: You are likely to see major or minor shifts in search queries triggering your Ads irrespective of the industry. The following approaches are feasible:

1. Review all search terms and display campaign placements in real-time for keywords and content related to COVID-19
2. Try and predict searches that may trigger your ads and create a consolidated negative keyword lists that can be shared among all campaigns and easily updated

Try and excludes keywords related to COVID-19 like:

1. Corona
2. COVID
3. Coronavirus
4. SARS
5. Virus
6. Wuhan
7. Epidemic
8. Pandemic

Google trends are the best tool which can provide you with the latest information on search behavior

• Revise Budgets and spending: Take a look at your budget vs. spend and shift it towards products or services that have more popularity and relevance now.

Depending on the platform, instead of setting up daily budgets try experimenting with monthly or lifetime budgets. This will save a lot of valuable time for other important account management tasks. It is advisable to really focus on improvising and finding a balance between multiple campaigns so that you can identify gaps and allocate budgets that have not been utilized throughout the year and apply it to the important ones.

• Focus on the right channels: With the current lockdown and #stayhome trending people are spending most of their leisure time on social media. People are engaging more with content like news and videos.

Facebook and WhatsApp have reported an increase in usage of their messaging, voice, and video calling services.

As mentioned earlier, many businesses have stopped or rather paused their marketing initiatives. This means there is an opportunity for advertisers because they will now face less competition and increase market share easily without making any changes to their current budgets. This is the moment to reach and connect with people at the top of the funnel through PPC and paid ads on social media.

Some opportunities worth mentioning are given below:

1. In-video ads and YouTube Ads
2. Pinterest for those groups who are discovering new products for purchase
3. Expansion of display ads on the Google Display Network and Microsoft Audience Network
4. Twitter is also a great option but there are repercussions with brand reputation issues arising from negative feedback and activities