5 Reasons Why Businesses Should Keep Running Social Media Ads Amidst COVID-19

It’s not easy being a marketer or a business in this time of crisis. As industries are gripped with disrupted supply chains, quarantined consumers, and restrictive government policies, meeting monthly sales targets have become even more difficult.

Marketing budgets, among other expenses, take the first cut with cost assessment as businesses focus on how they can stay in operation.

It's close to impossible to sell products and services that people think are non-essential to their day-to-day; however, there are benefits to maintaining your ads and online presence beyond the immediate sales and conversions.

• Everyone is now online.

Since people spend more time at home amidst the ongoing lockdowns, social media usage has spiked. According to Facebook, voice and video calling have more than doubled, traffic from the social network to other websites has increased by over 50% week-on-week, and users are becoming more active as they take their conversations about the coronavirus disease to newsfeeds, groups, and chat rooms. More usage means more available impressions and will cause cost-effective results for ad campaigns.

• Competitors have put marketing activities on hold.

If you can afford to maintain your social media ads, during the crisis is a strategic period. Your competitors have most likely put a pause to their campaigns, which means you have the chance to take a bigger share of the market’s attention. Also, since the competition for the same audience is lower, you can expect a decrease in your cost-per-result bids.

• Digital is a better option for media spend.

If you are more focused on deciding where to allot your media spend, consider channeling your investment in social media ads. As opposed to TV commercials and radio spots, sponsored social media content allows you to target a more specific audience so that you can focus on your potential customers. In addition, you won’t have to worry about the problems of the logistics of video production caused by the quarantine, or the limited reach of radio networks who provide updates in their social network pages, anyway.

• Brand Awareness is relatively more affordable.

Traffic and conversion objectives in social media ad placements are no doubt more costly compared to awareness objectives. If you’re working with a limited budget, consider maintaining awareness for your brand instead since people are more focused on purchasing essential items.. As opposed to reaching the most number of people, you can reach an audience that will most likely remember your brand through Facebook’s brand awareness placements.

• Get attention now. Sell later.

Maintaining a connection with your online audience in spite of not being able to sell to them immediately is a strategic approach to your marketing campaign. Focus on messaging that is sincere to the people’s situation and that demonstrates your brand’s responsibility in these difficult times. Win your audience’s trust and support and reap the rewards later on.

Maintaining and investing in online presence may not be the best option for all businesses, but one thing is for certain – actions you do today will have an impact in the results you can expect in the future.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we wish you and your business the best.

Images from energepic.com, Tracy Le Blanc, and cottonbro from Pexels