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COVID-19 crisis has taken the world of the internet by storm – As we go deeper into lockdowns, many of us are turning to the internet for news updates, information, checking up on friends and family. At the same time, there is a lot of content floating around advising companies to invest massively in digital marketing to generate sales and leads. Internet traffic is over the roof. And we see a gamut of suggestions – invest in websites, invest in paid campaigns.

Given the outpour of suggestions, the pressing question at this point is 

Should you invest in digital marketing strategies in the COVID-19 crisis?

As a digital marketer, I am not against it. It is our bread and butter after all and Point Blanc Media, a Digital Marketing Agency offers all these services. But the need of the hour is to be sensible, practical and adaptable. You need to go back to the drawing board and optimize your resources to understand how corona is affecting business. 

See what will work and what will not work. 

  • Which products are going to sell? 
  • What category will work? 
  • What platforms will work? 

These are some of the questions you need to answer. Businesses today need sensible and genuine partners who can help them in the time of crisis and advise them on how best to use their budgets so they can yield maximum results.

So what options do you have?

First, it is important to understand how does digital marketing fit in your consumer journey

Your digital assets and campaigns generate awareness about your products/services. —-> Your sales channels (eCommerce for B2C) or (sales teams for B2B) will convert leads into closed prospects.

Now let’s divide this into steps 

Marketing:

Step 1 – Have your digital assets ready (your website, active social media channel, Mobile Apps)

Step 2 – Launch your digital marketing campaigns on products/services  that will work during COVID-19 ;

Step 3 – Drive traffic to your digital assets

Step 4 – Generate sales leads 

Step  5 – Qualify sales leads 

Step 6 – Convert them

Say in step 1 from your digital marketing campaigns you draw 500 people to your website or social media. If 3% of 500 converts into sales lead = =  15 leads are passed on to your sales team. Of these 15 leads, 25% leads are disqualified over budget issues, or wrong flit clients, leaving you with = = 11 prospects. 

You send proposals to 11 prospects of which  33% respond positively. This leaves you with = =  4 hot leads of which your team closes 50% so you get ==  2 closed deals. From your top of the funnel – you got 500 visitors of which you converted 2 which means your conversion rate was 0.4.

Calculating ROI

Now let’s dig into the marketing spend and numbers – If your product costs $5000 and you spent $2500 ($5 per visit), then your ROI from the entire marketing would be:

Revenue earned – $10,000

Marketing Budget – $2500

Marketing ROI – 400%

An  ROI or ROAS of 500% is good and a lot of companies would consider it a good value for money. 

But this ROI needs to be continuously improved. What you need to do is optimize each step from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel to get more returns on less investment. Each stage of the customer journey needs to be evaluated and optimized for better results

What factors to consider to improve conversion?

  • Is the content on your digital assets such as website interesting enough 
  • What is your average session rate? What is the bounce rate?
  • How is your sales team faring? What is the quality of follow-up
  • How fast are you sending your proposal – remember a lead is hot only in the first 24 hours
  • Post Proposal follow up
  • Pricing, contract terms, and negotiation

Each of the above is extremely critical for closing deals and we suggest that each stage is improved likewise.

Top Ways to Improve your Revenue at Zero Cost during COVID-19 Crisis

Optimize Sales Process and Marketing Collateral:

COVID-19 means that businesses now have more time to look at the internal sales process and update their marketing collateral. Evaluate what parts of the marketing and sales funnel can be improved. Here is how by improving business sales in COVID-19 crisis, you can increase your sales graph.

1 – Create Engaging Content

Evaluate which content is keeping visitors engaged on your website. Which type of content is getting you more traction and longer session times. What type of imagery, visuals do you need? If you are able to make visitors on your site stay longer, then your conversion could improve.

2 –  Sales Process and Follow up

I cannot stress enough on this. Leads are hot only in the first 24 hours. You need to see how your leads are being followed up on? What is the turnaround time? Do you have auto templates, nurturing messages, scripts?

4- Adapt your proposals 

Most of the time the proposals sit in your folders as PDF or PPT and then sent over to clients with more emphasis on your business than the client’s needs. Reword and adapt your proposals to focus more on your prospects’ needs. Customize proposals for each vertical that your business caters to for your business survival in COVID-19 crisis to be averted. 

How will the above measures improve your conversion?

  • For your initial traffic of 500 visitors, now due to engaging content on the website, the conversion rate improves from 3% to 5% = 25 sales leads.
  • Due to better quality website bounce rate decreased and session time increased – disqualification rate decreases from 25% to 20%,  now you have 20 leads that require a proposal.
  • Sales follow up and proposal quality has significantly improved meaning now you have increased hot leads from 33% to 40% of 20 sales leads. = 8 hot leads.
  • Let’s assume a slightly higher closing rate of 60% from 50% so now you end up closing 5 leads!! From previously 2 leads.

The impact on revenue and ROI:

Let’s say your cost per product/service is the same at $5000 so for 5 closed leads, your revenue is $25,000

  • Revenue = $25,000

  • Marketing cost = 2,500

  • Marketing ROI = 1,000%

Your previous ROI was 400% and just by taking small measures, you were able to improve your ROI drastically. So really, now is the time to sit back, asses, evaluate and make business improvements to impact

How Can We Help you?

Different ways of improving your business in this COVID-19.

We can help you with end to end Digital Transformation, creating sales processes, and assets and align them with your marketing strategies to give you maximum return on your commercial spend. We are extremely practical when it comes to marketing budgets despite being Google and Facebook partners.

  • We will first evaluate your internal process
  • Audit your assets 
  • Optimize them for better performance
  • Then we invest in paid media to give you traffic

Until we are not satisfied with your digital assets and internal processes, we will not invest in paid media which is another science altogether.

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