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COVID-19 has sparked a very
humanized
moment and experience. Marketing, pop-culture, brands and more will always follow intrinsic human experience. Sometimes it’s overlooked in the dizzying array of tech from the day-to-day, but in this very fragile moment, we highlight the human spirit. The outpouring of global goodwill, search for information, efficiency and charity, is reflecting and changing our search behavior, and we are here to help you navigate through this with time-saving optimization tips.
Check out these seven Search tactics to navigate COVID-19. Watch our video and check out the tips below for more! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbTSMpgYISw&t=13s[/embed]
Know Your Search Trends and Expand Your Content
Users are flocking to the SERP, but overall conversion rates from advertisers are trending down by 21%, pointing to anticipated search behavior, but low on any kind of consumer purchase intent. However, this is not necessarily true for
all
verticals. By knowing your specific keyword, query, bid and industry trends, you can stay ahead of the game. Break into new or temporary content under a unique lens or get a head start on comp analysis for when our current state comes to pass.
For example,
goodwill
and
non-profit
is performing well - as it should be with a 10% increase in search impressions and 20% increase in search ad conversions.
Health
and
medical
content is seeing a 47% increase in search conversions and 34% spike in search clicks, while searches for
at-home office supplies
surged to 90% and a 47% conversion rate. Of course, there are verticals getting hit equally as hard with 20-50%+ deltas in the negative: travel, sports & entertainment, bars & restaurants, building & construction, etc.
The mention here is to weaponize clarity with understanding and seize opportunity. Even if your vertical or brand does not align with the performing trends above, there may be a way to expand and get creative with ad copy, landing pages and a campaign that offers your unique brand’s solution to the market needs of
goodwill
,
informational
and
essential
. Creatively doing so, even with low spend, can get you into those high click and impression share topics, maintaining top-of-mind consideration and authenticity to carry through potential downturns.
Need some free research tools? Start with this! Google Lab, is
curating trends related to the pandemic
, alongside
Google Trends
. Full article and statistics from above were provided by Mark Irvine via
WordStream
, and the report can be found
here
.
Preserve Omni-channel Budget by Moving It to Lower-Funnel Tactics:
As noted in our
previous article
,
a loved
brand truly rules all. However, slower yielding tactics to build that consumer loyalty may need to take a backseat during this global pandemic. We all are searching for information, essential items and a lot of goodwill in a very direct-response way: User-initiated on-demand via the SERP. User-initiated pull media is reigning over brand exploration, at least for the moment. If omnichannel budgets are a concern, consider shifting higher funnel spend from things like display down to social, email and search. Of course, you can still keep those higher brand
tactics
, just wrapped within the lower funnel
channels
. If programmatic and display does indeed yield top conversion rates and budget for your business, by all means keep it going!
Check out our recent tips and tricks for programmatic advertising in the face of COVID-19 article here.
Adjust Constraints & Pull New Levers:
Once you have a pulse on keywords, CPCs, trends and potential impression share, it is time to adjust. Consider changing caps and constraints if CPCs are trending lower for your industry to preserve margin, pause under-performing or inefficient parts of the portfolio that can wait until after the market stabilizes, and then shift spend into brand or trademark content. Raise budgets’ thresholds on demanded content to ensure you are capitalizing on any traffic increases. Every situation will be unique to each advertiser and require a creative attack. Within
SA360
, there are a number of tools that can help:
- Check the “Move unused budget” recommendation from Optimization Score, to get details on where you can be more efficient.
- Harvest new keywords or negatives by looking at search queries generating activity within the search terms and queries view, nested under the keywords tab.
- Make use of all sitelink options for maximizing the SERP. Make sure to deep-link them to relevant pages or promotions within.
- Capitalize on unknown content not historically explored since traffic will be different during this time by activating Dynamic Search Ads or Responsive Search Ads. Utilizing this feature may expose new incremental lift and campaign performance.
- Use Labels to quickly organize content to take action against or identify elements and keywords being affected with marginal drops from this global event.