Post-eCommerce Coronavirus Marketing and Advertising Strategies
Our current situation has provoked an incredible increase in eCommerce transactions during the last few months, nearing around 55% on average. This isn’t just happening for the big players either, but also for SMEs. Check this eCommerce coronavirus marketing and advertising trciks!
eCommerce has seen growth even before the Coronavirus. The crisis transformed the relationship between brands and their customers, and accelerated the digital transformation of many businesses.
In one month, eCommerce has seen a growth larger than its previous years. It would have taken between 4-6 years to reach the online spending levels in May: $82.5 billion, a 77% increase from the previous year.
Additionally, while shoppers were moving online, online advertising costs decreased notably. This was due to various reasons such as a fall in demand and a decrease in competition as many businesses lowered their advertising budgets.
It’s crucial to take advantage of the current situation and start implementing a proper post-coronavirus eCommerce strategy immediately. If you have not had a cohesive online eCommerce strategy you will find yourself behind.
Let’s take a look at some eCommerce advertising strategies that are easy and fast to implement:
Post-Coronavirus Marketing and Advertising Strategies
Prioritize improving add-to-carts
The impact of Covid on eCommerce showed a higher number of people clicking on ads but not necessarily adding products to their cart at the same rate as before.
To help combat this, improving your add-to-carts should be one of the first things on your mind. Here’s how you can do this:
- Customize welcome emails to drive first purchases.
- Invest in remarketing – show ads to the people that left without purchasing so they remember you and end up shopping.
- Launch attractive limited time offers – create a sense of urgency.
- Capture leads and emails at the top of the funnel, you can then turn these leads into sales through lead nurturing and remarketing strategies.
Add seasonality adjustments
This is especially important for any account with automated bidding. In times of continuous changes and uncertainty, it’s important to continually adapt your advertising to the circumstances and customer behavior variations.
And when it’s possible, try to anticipate them instead of reacting to them.
Communication should be honest and “in the moment”
The strategies, tactics and offers that worked in the pre-Coronavirus world most likely won’t have the same effect.
Does the “new normal” require higher discounts? Should we mention the virus straightforwardly in our advertising or should we use a softer tone? What’s the best way to adapt our communication to address safety and shipping concerns?
Whatever you end up doing, you should always communicate it to your customers and audience with honesty and in the moment.
An honest and straightforward message like “we are still shipping, but we don’t know for how long” has seen great success. It displays honesty while creating a sense of urgency at the same time.
I recommend not using terms directly related to the Coronavirus unless you feel it’s absolutely necessary in your marketing communications. However, in Google advertising you should NEVER use related terms or your ads will be turned off automatically.
Pay attention and track your marketing mix
Now that eCommerce businesses are adapting and changing their marketing mix strategies while applying more tactics and diversifying risks, it’s important to track it correctly.
Some of the strategies whose popularity have raised during the crisis are:
- Worldwide advertising to extend reach, especially on platforms such as Google (for search or branded campaigns) or Facebook (for raising awareness).
- SMS marketing.
- Referral programs and influencer marketing.
- Rewards to boost retention and clients’ lifetime value.
- Performance Max campaigns (Google and Microsoft)
How can you measure the results of your marketing mix? A good formula to use during these times is MER (marketing earned revenue), it’s as easy as dividing total sales by total advertising.
Generate content that matches your audience
Focus on the content that better serves and engages with your audience. Is it videos, tutorials, infographics, posts, guides, or e-courses?
What then, should you sell it? Send it by mail to capture the lead? Offer it for free?
If you aren’t fully aware of your customers preference, then test different options and go for the best performing one!
Show off on social media – create a community
Some products and services heavily rely on social proof and queues to drive buyers, vanity products for instance.
How can you make that product shine with social distancing? Show them off in social media posts, stories, threads or online events!
If you have a loyal community, it won’t cost you any time or effort. The community will naturally feel involved and post the content themselves, making it so you only have to share it and keep engaging with them.
Test your traffic
We’re currently in a long-term situation with cheap clicks and low conversion rates.
There are some tests you can do to leverage inexpensive traffic around your homepage CTAs and value propositions. Monitor video watch times, email pop-ups, abandonment emails, or even quizzes.
To sum it up
People are shopping online more than ever, and online shopping trends generated during the Coronavirus crisis may see a permanent effect.
A lot of people have shifted to the online world and have realized its convenience, creating lasting behavioral changes.
That’s why advertisers should figure out which post-Coronavirus eCommerce strategies they want to implement.
Let’s conclude with some data that might help you:
- Around 10% of eCommerce businesses mention Coronavirus related terms in their websites (COVID-19, illness, pandemic, etc.) and almost 4% mention terms related to quarantine, stay-at-home, safety or health.
- The number of people buying online from a Shopify store that they’d never shopped before grew by 45%.
- Advertising costs are down 30-40% from the Coronavirus outbreak, in comparison to pre-pandemic costs.
- Only 4% of retailers kept the majority of their ads running in March, 15% of them in April.
- Nearly 34% of eCommerce businesses are currently running discounts or sales.
