A review of the impact of COVID-19 on paid media performance.
Just like everything else around us at the moment, there’s no denying that the recent developments in the spread of Coronavirus and associated governmental policies will have had some kind of impact on your business and more specifically, your PPC campaigns.
However, all may not be lost.
We’ve been busy analysing all of our client’s accounts (something we’re doing continuously to measure the impact on the campaigns) and so far, while there has been an impact, there are still valuable opportunities to gain from PPC.
The search volume has decreased over the last few weeks, especially for some face to face services, which can only be expected as users are taking a step back from everyday life and settling into the new advice of social distancing. BUT, and there is a but, the drop in volume has not meant that there are no longer opportunities and leads out there.
Since the latest development in the UK’s strategy for COVID-19 at the beginning of this week, the drop in clicks and search volume equates to about 21% compared to the previous period, while the conversion rate has only reduced by 5%. On average, the drop in traffic is greater than the decline in conversion rates, suggesting that while less people may be searching for less services we know that the ones who are searching have more intent, as opposed to just carrying out informational searches.
Specifically in property campaigns, we’ve actually noticed an increase in conversion rates across the sales campaigns (170% increase), plus maintained a high conversion rate (12%) across valuation campaigns, with a large majority of people turning to instant valuations and online services.
In difficult times, it’s often the brave companies that are willing to keep investing that emerge stronger. We fully understand that most of our clients will be looking to cut costs, but we ask you to carefully consider and discuss the implications prior to making any decisions.
Here is our advice for the time being:
We will monitor your market activity and may suggest to reduce overall media budgets (we’ve already actioned this for all our property clients). This spend reduction will go much further, due to a less competitive landscape and more opportunity to gain search presence.
Consider making changes to your company strategy - perhaps increase your focus toward online services, especially as the virus develops and most users will be distancing themselves from unnecessary contact. We have noticed some of our clients offering remote video viewings. Please let us know about these changes so we can alter your ad copy to reflect the service offering.
We’re continuing to monitor the trend across all accounts so that we can respond to any further impacts in the account, but if you are looking for any advice and information on running PPC campaigns during the current circumstances, then please feel free to reach out to our team.