Coronavirus Business Evolution: When, why and how to get ready to invest on Google Ads

 

In this unprecedented situation surrounded with a lot of uncertainty and things changing daily, there is only one thing we can say for sure:  Coronavirus impact on health, society and economy evolved into a global event with consequences all around the world.

Business of all sizes felt and are still feeling the impact of COVID-19, specially small and medium businesses, both financially and emotionally. 

Our goal has always been to help business with limited budgets have a fighting chance to grow through online advertising by creating their Google Ads campaigns, and offering them complimentary Google advertising tools with Clever Ads.

Today our main priority is to help small and medium Google advertisers fully overcome their Coronavirus business impact by providing them with the means and information necessary to adapt their Google Ads strategies to the new consumer behavior and global scenario: the coronavirus impact.

When will it be a good moment to start increasing my Google Ads investment?

There are several ways you can notice it’s time to start increasing your Google Ads investment to pre-coronavirus levels:

• When you notice a growing demand on what you offer, prepare yourself to spend more on advertising. 
• Keywords are also a good way to notice when to increase your Google Ads efforts again. You can track the search volume evolution of your keywords through Google Trends, and compare pre and post Coronavirus levels. When they reach similar levels, it means it’s time to start building spend. 
• Some locations are opening sooner than others, a good time to know when you should start reinvesting money on Google Ads is when non-essential businesses start reopening in the locations you are selling.
• Check your impression share, if your impression share starts decreasing it means there are now more competitors out there bidding for the same keywords. If more advertisers are entering into the space, it’s a good signal you can do it too. 
• Also your total number of impressions is a great indicator, in this case not about what your competitors are doing but about what your potential customers are doing. More impressions means more people searching for what you offer.
• You should also pay attention at metrics from other platforms, like your social media. If engagement and interactions with your posts increase, it means people are getting ready.

Why to ramp up back your Google Ads investment (and how to start).

Clever Ads data shows that businesses started to reinvest on Google advertising since the beginning of May. If you haven’t yet and doubt whether to do it or not, here you have the main reasons why most businesses are doing so:

• Google needs a strong historical data to have your campaigns properly optimized. That’s why you should try to avoid going completely dark and always keep some presence.
• Avoid competitors from gaining ground and taking away potential customers and market share. It’s common that companies bid for their competitors’ brand keywords, so you should at least keep a brand campaign on Google Ads.
• Show customers you are still active and communicate them you are there for them during these crucial times even if you can’t offer your products or services. Don’t forget ads are a great tool for communicating with customers.

Not all business are being able to re-open completely or to offer their products and services to the same extent they did before Coronavirus. However, increasing your advertising efforts again, even if it’s with limited ads, will help you come back stronger.

A good way to start is approaching your best customers first, before working on acquiring new clients. Some strategies you can work on to do so are:

1# Build retargeting audiences on Google Ads for reaching your past customers: Existing customers have an average conversion rate of 3 times higher than new ones. If you have their information, like their email, you can create customer lists to point them with specific Google Ads for those audiences.

2# Reach past website visitors that didn’t convert: Even if they are not your clients yet, they already know you and showed interest on what you offer. The possibilities are higher that this group will end up purchasing from you that those people who don’t even know who you are.

3# Start capturing new leads for applying the mentioned strategies above so they end up converting when they’re ready. Maybe leads will take time to convert, but don’t worry. Test different CTAs and ways to capture information from them so you can use remarketing for converting them.

Also, when starting your advertising efforts again on Google Ads, I recommend you reactivate only your Google Search ads as it offers high visibility to intent, or your best performing campaigns for the moment. 

Start slow until the data shows you otherwise.

Remember: Google donated + $800 million in cash and ads to fight the COVID-19 Google Ads impact.

Google aimed to minimize COVID-19 impact on small and medium businesses by doing the largest donation a tech giant has ever made, mostly through Google Ads promo code. 

These Google Ads credits could also help paliate the evident downturn in Google advertising we’ve already detected through most industries.

The Google Ads credits will be available to use any time this year for all SMBs with active Google accounts over the past year. If you haven’t yet, you can benefit from it by just entering  your Google Ads account: credit notifications will appear there.

Conclusion

Become aware of that it will take time to come back to a normal Google Ads level investment and performance. 

To sum it up, when starting to increase your investment on Google Ads, take the following takeaways into account:

• Keep your Google advertising active online if you can, even if it’s just part of it.
• Pay attention to changes in demand, especially growing search volumes and impressions. 
• Connect with your customers through advertising, so they feel you close and are aware of any updates.
• Pay attention to geographic information in terms of re-opening areas. 
• If you have a limited budget, start with search ads and brand campaigns.

At Clever Ads, we will continue monitoring the situation and markets and the Coronavirus’ business response so we can keep you informed to make the best decisions for your Google advertising strategies.