Adapt Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategies For The COVID-19 Era
The times we are witnessing are nothing less than a scripted movie plot.
A deadly virus has spread across the globe, people confined to their homes, social distancing being practiced, international events and business meets stand canceled, sports have come to a halt, schools and colleges shut down are just some of the many effects of this world-shaking COVID-19 pandemic.
But what have been some effects on businesses? Especially eCommerce businesses because they act as the beacon of light during these dark times when almost every other brick and mortar store is closed.
Decreasing conversion rates, customers in great confusion, and employees striving hard to rake in more purchases.
Who will come to their rescue?
Let me give you a hint, it’s not an actual person. You got that right.
It’s your eCommerce marketing strategy.
The time has come when we ought to redefine and revamp our eCommerce strategies to make our businesses ready for the COVID-19 era.
The recent weeks have been extremely unsettling and catastrophic for all business types including eCommerce, and guess what:
We don’t even know when it will all get normal. Till then, this situation of lockdown, social distancing, and remote work are the new norms.
The best is to accept the current situation and plan for a strategy that will help us in going through this bad Coronavirus situation.
In this article, I’ll be sharing some proactive tips to adapt your eCommerce strategies for the COVID-19 era.
#Tip 1: Help Others To Boost Your Organic Growth
Many or almost every one of you must be facing a gradual dip in your sales and conversion rates. In such panic, it is normal that customers often run away from making new purchases. Use this opportunity to show them how much you care for them.
Have a look at how Neil Patel responded to the situation and took control of things. At the beginning of March, he observed a gradual decrease in his number of customers. When he observed that his business is losing money, he decided to make all premium features free to the users.
You might be thinking whether it was a smart step or did it make the situation even worse?
But believe me, it was actually a very smart step taken by Neil for Ubersuggest. Here’s what he says:
“Keep in mind, new customers means free trials… a large portion of free-trial users doesn’t convert into paying customers but still, the more trials you get in theory, the more paid customers you will eventually get.”
Here is a chart breakdown of his free-trial signups and new customers for Ubersuggest throughout the month of March:
As you see that the number of new customers is declining but when compared to the chart breakdown of March 9, we can see better performance.
Here’s the chart for March 9:
Now let’s see the good side of Neil’s plan. Although Ubersuggest saw a huge decline in the number of customers, the traffic started to grow up.
Check this out:
The above case is a perfect example of indirect benefits that are received by an organization just by strategizing a generous feeling of offering help to others.
Just by offering some free help to your customers or your audience, you can gain their trust and a little benefit for your business as well.
#Tip 2: Paid Ads Have Never Been Cheaper
Yes, you read that right. The current scenario is a perfect time and opportunity to invest in paid advertisements.
Want to know how?
This makes sense because of the way the ad networks function. You would already be knowing that big ad networks make money through an auction system. They make use of small business owners to drive the cost-per-click (CPC) due to which big corporations have to spend more money on ads.
But due to the outbreak of Coronavirus, the competition in the advertising business has declined to a great extent. Thus, making the ads cheaper.
There’s another thing to be noticed that due to the quarantine period, people are making themselves more dependent on digital and online media. Web traffic is up and the number of advertisers has reduced.
Though conversion rates are dropping, it is nowhere close to the rate at which the CPC is clashing.
When an average of all the parameters is taken into account, per industry and globally, we notice that the ROI of paid ads has certainly increased.
Taking all things into account like a drop in the bidding prices, a drop in CPCs, and an increase in ROI, you can definitely look forward to using paid ads during the COVID-19 era.
#Tip 3: Strategize Your Payment Methods
The conversion rates for various industries are dropping to such an extent that there is a global threat of global job risks. Here is a stat that describes how the job risks in various industries have grown:
Businesses across the globe have reported a huge loss, for example, Delta airlines. On April 3rd, Delta CEO Ed Bastian reported that the airline is losing over 60 million dollars each day.
Now instead of being feared from these stats, we need to adapt our eCommerce strategy that can tackle the problem. You can revamp your payment strategies.
Have you heard of Affirm?
If you’re an eCommerce store selling online, you can consider offering your customers with payment plans through Affirm. Instead of paying you the full amount upfront, your customers can choose a monthly basis plan with the help of Affirm on checkout.
By doing so, you can lighten the financial burden of your customers. Not only this, if you are a company that offers services, you can also take payments over a certain period of time, like a year or two.
In such a situation where making money seems to be a mammoth task for companies, offering sustainable payment can really become your saviour.
#Tip 4: Start Offering Training Based Program
Amidst this panicky situation, if you’re still thinking of making some bucks, offering educational based courses can be a big opportunity. Due to the all-time high unemployment rates, people are seeking new opportunities and learning new skills.
There are many fields where people want to make their career but need expert guidance.
What if you could be an expert there?
You can register your course on online learning platforms like Udemy and create a course that fits within your niche, to offer a realistic price for your learners.
People want to grow and there is nothing better than helping them grow better.
#Tip 5: Understanding The Diversity Of The Spread
Coronavirus or COVID-19 is a global threat and has been affecting countries worldwide. But you can’t overlook the fact that some regions have been hit much harder when compared to the others.
For example, South Korea has been lucky in keeping the spread under control but the United States was not.
What I mean to say that with 3,747,275 cases (and counting), the spread of the disease can have an effect on the traffic of your eCommerce sites. You can make use to churn a good amount of traffic by considering international SEO.
The pandemic spread can be used for diversifying the source of regions from where you get your traffic from, and performing international SEO is definitely a way of doing that. There’s not much that you’ve to do to your current eCommerce marketing strategies. Just translate your content into the various languages and leverage other search engine optimization techniques like:
- Keyword research for the language you’re focusing on.
- Building localized backlinks.
- Localizing your content.
- Using subdirectories and subdomains for each language or country.
- Making use of hreflang.
And yeah you’re good to go.
Conclusion
eCommerce marketers are going through some major changes in society that can trickle down all their marketing plans. But as I said before, no one can save you except you.
Some areas where I would like you to focus on:
- People that rely upon event-based businesses have to find an alternative, like turn to webinars or something because the restrictions like social distancing and lockdown have a severe impact on such companies.
- Focus on delivering compelling content. People have started to switch more towards digital media to kill their time in this lockdown phase. Thus, delivering great content can help you boost your organic traffic in the COVID-19 era.
- Work upon your social media strategy to make your brand stand out in the competing world. Find out unique ways to show how your brand is concerned about the whole situation and is looking forward to taking actions that are in the best interest of your followers and customers.
Instead of panicking, we need to anticipate the situation and take actions that can adapt your eCommerce business to survive in the COVID-19 era. In the end, I would say whether we’re business owners or customers, we all have to fight the virus together.
Here’s how MakeWebBetter stands strong with its customers amidst the Coronavirus.
Practice social distancing, self-quarantine, and adhere to Government rules to save the world.
Stay Apart To Stay United.
