Thoughts on Marketing and spending on paid media in these trying times!
With the recent twist of events, forcing most of us to work from home, one inevitable consequence has been the crazy increase in the time we spend glued to our screens (be it laptops, phones or the neighbor's TV!). I’ve been thinking about what this means to the digital marketing business and how companies should think about changing their online strategies especially paid media and online marketing spend strategies. To start with I’ve been trying to wrap my head about what the implications of the spike in screen time poses -
- With the current economic downturn driving an increase in unemployment, temporary suspensions of employment and a general fear of an impending recession, online purchasing activity might see declines with people’s spending powers going down.
- More screen time leads to more ads being viewed, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of the impressions and click-throughs are good especially given the current economic conditions. This might mean that companies might end up spending a lot more on ads on low-quality traffic that doesn’t convert hence diluting the Return On Media Spend.
- The trends and implications are highly industry-specific. For example — the hospitality business has taken a huge hit and has come to a grinding halt because of lockdown and travel restrictions. So for businesses in these industries like Airbnb, it might make sense to cut down or slow down on marketing and media spend especially ones that are more conversion-focused. That’s exactly what Airbnb is planning on doing with its marketing! Office Productivity apps like Zoom, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Slack, etc. are seeing a huge boost in traffic and conversions as companies are shifting to working from home and moving things completely online.
With this in mind, coming back to the initial question of how should companies think about their investments in paid media and digital marketing?
In my simplistic view, the answer depends on the industry you are in and to some extent the size of the company. Companies who are in the industries that are benefitting by work from home who are seeing increased usage, engagement and conversions should continue to invest to shore up their positions and to keep the acquisition funnel going regardless of the size of the company. Whereas when it comes to industries that are seeing huge declines would have to reduce spend or completely stop it depending on their size to cover their operating costs and to ensure they aren’t flushing money down the drain by investing in paid media and ads during a time where there isn’t any activity. While smaller companies might have to completely stop marketing spend in these times, larger companies with a moat could still keep investing to maintain the brand and to stay in the consideration set of the target customers!
I’ll wrap up with an example of how some mobile App companies are approaching this from an App Store Optimization(ASO) perspective. Apps in the productivity and office category like Adobe Reader and Docusign are doubling down on the ASO and paid marketing efforts by optimizing and targeting specific keywords in the category. But apps in the Creative Imaging or Photography categories are seeing declines in demand and so in these categories, the apps are going broader and targeting keywords that are more general instead of being specific to just the category make sure to keep the flow of traffic coming in.
Share your thoughts on how you are thinking about marketing in these trying times and the industry in general in the comments.
