To Market or Not to Market: A Question for an Unusual World

Today's world is increasingly impacted by the unknown. Even as some regions begin opening back up, many businesses have been given strict guidelines for reopening, especially in relation to social distancing and health protection requirements.

With margins becoming slimmer and all the challenges related to employee headcount, business owners are working hard to limit their expenses as much as possible.

But through all this, one of the most pressing questions is: "Should businesses keep marketing during the COVID-19 crisis?" Here are some things that we think should be considered.

Business Status

One of the first things to consider is the status of the business: Are you open, partially open, or temporarily closed? If your business is still able to produce goods or services, now may be a better time to market more than ever with so many businesses withdrawing their funding in the digital space due to temporary closures.

While the revenue may be lower than usual, purpose-driven and targeted marketing will help you continue to drive traffic to your business.

If it's closed, you may want to restructure your marketing to promote your reopening plans or how you've chosen to operate given the state government guidelines. This may lead to improved traffic upon reopen if you are transparent and your customer base has an idea of what you're working towards.

Cost

Another consideration is the cost of marketing. First, you need to know how much it costs to acquire a customer. This can help you ascertain if marketing is beneficial.

It's a good idea to review your CPC and conversions for each ad.

For example, you'll want to know if you have a high CPC for your industry, such as through Facebook Ads and Google Ads. You also need to know if you have low conversions, which are based on the goals that you set for your marketing strategy. This could be based on link clicks, form submissions, or phone calls.

Based on this information, you should consider adjusting the ad, either with your team or through a marketing professional. It is important to realize that changes can be made to many different aspects of the ad, such as image, platform, messaging, and audience. One ad may not perform well on one platform but with a view tweaks, can gain much more traction on another.

Not every ad you put online is going to be a winner.

However, most tools have guidelines that can you understand what went wrong not to mention the countless support forums or channels online that are dedicated to this exact topic. See what went wrong and see what you can do differently. Marketing deals a lot with controlled experimentation.

Education about the Marketplace

You need to know what's going on in the marketplace. This means searching traffic in relation to certain industries, where the traffic is increased and the CPCs have decreased. This is the type of information should always be looking for to help you capitalize on new opportunities within the market.

Decision Time

If you've done all your research and are aware of the state of your industry, it's time to make a decision.

If your business is closed and the industry in which you operate is largely shut down, paid digital marketing may not be as beneficial at this current state.

However, thinking outside the box is what makes good businesses great.

Leveraging free resources such as posting on a social media, creating a YouTube channel, or finding ways to create a better virtual experience for your customers are key to finding success in today's world. Best of all, those first two options only require a smart phone.

You know your business best. But maybe you don't want to be marketer, and would rather focus on your core competency of being a business owner.

At Brightlark, a growth agency based in Denver, we offer services that help business' connect with their customers every day. We see ourselves as an extension of our partners teams and find no greater join than seeing them succeed even in times like these.