Marketing Through This Pandemic
Free resources and mental health support will help us all through this historical disruption. We’re taking what we’ve learned from our 223 accounts and bringing that knowledge to you.
Keep reading to see our approach to weathering the storm.
What’s your challenge?
We feel what you feel and during this time it’s up to us to all help each other. Marketer to marketer, we get the gut-wrenching feeling of working through a pandemic and it’s tough. If you’re stuck, email us. We are happy to have a conversation and find you extra resources. marketing@hanapinmarketing.com
As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.
What you can do right now
- Lean into social platforms. While folks are stuck at home, social media usage has skyrocketed, making CPMs unprecedentedly low. Our Facebook rep has let us know that while clicks are at an all time high, cost is quite low. This is our number one recommendation for education friends and clients at this time. The surge on Facebook is as high as it usually is during big holidays, so this is the perfect time to invest. Here are a few On Demand Webinars to help you with this!
Driving the Right Conversions from Facebook Ads: Your 60-Minute Masterclass
Connect the Likes: Tracking Visits to Improve Facebook Ads Performance
- Focus on online, professional development, and part-time/C-suite-focused programs. During the last recession we saw a big bump in enrollments for our education friends and clients. The longer these lock-downs continue, we anticipate a similar trend. Folks will be looking to level-up their learning while they have down time so that once the economy starts to bounce back, they will have a leg up on their competition. Keep these folks in mind as you write your ad copy!
- Update copy to reflect positive branding. If you don’t have online programs, it’s important to focus on goodwill-centered branding so that once folks start enrolling again, you are top of mind. Here is a quick 3-minute read on how you can make quick edits across many accounts: Paid Media & COVID-19: Efficiently Align Ads with Large-Scale Business Changes
- Competitor research
- Forecasting: by collecting insights from Google we combine that with what we know to be happening across paid search and the education industry to thoughtfully produce algorithms that can help with predicting future statistics. Here is our current list of industry reports to help you do the same. The 2020 Short Report: Paid Advertising Trends for Education Marketers
- Building a strategy for when accounts ramp back up. Think through a variety of scenarios for which you could need a strategy and have that ready to pop into place.
- Freshen ad copy and make sure your ad specs are correct. Check out our comprehensive list of ad specs to make sure you are on track. Hanapin Marketing: Ad Gallery
- Prepare for future promos and other comeback strategies while you are offline and tweak them as the scenario unfolds
- Time to test other markets! If you have online programs, consider advertising to an international audience.
Helpful resources for paused or decreased budgets
- Lean into positive branding: If you don’t forecast many students signing up for classes this fall, focus on branding. While you can’t get enrollments now, the best option is to spread the good word about positive efforts your establishment is engaging in to remain memorable. That way, once enrollments start picking up again, you will be top of mind. Check out a quick 3-minute read on how brand equity helped one of our clients: Paid Media & COVID-19: Focusing on Engagement & Top-of-Funnel Activity
- Stay abreast of current news and updates in the industry: Hanapin Marketing’s Library of Webinars. Sign up for any of our April webinars, all of which are dedicated to addressing how COVID-19 is affecting PPC and how to work through it.
Ask the Experts: How to Approach Your Paid Media During COVID-19
Forecasting Despite Uncertainty: Anticipating Trends for Your Paid Media Accounts
- See what your fellow Marketers are doing: PPC Hero has a number of blog posts recently released on this topic, including the following:
Has COVID-19 Affected Your PPC Accounts?
What Non-Profits Taught Me About Social Media Marketing
Amazon & Google: Affects of COVID-19 on Digital Marketing
- Leave no stone unturned, audit your account: The PPC Account Audit Guide
- Always be optimizing, starting with CRO: Landing Page Optimizations Drive a 143% Increase in Conversions.
- Improve your current processes: Brainlabs’ Greatest Scripts: An anthology of open source scripts that will elevate your search strategy to superhero status.
- Boost the morale of your fellow marketers: Nominate the experts who have impacted you in your career. PPC Hero’s Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts
- Take advantage of tools that wouldn’t normally be free: Adzooma is offering temporary open access to the full Adzooma platform (automation and optimization tools) for free until June 1st.
- Learn a new skill: Take a tip from our friends over at Distilled and level up your PPC knowledge with some SEO to back it up. Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO: while introductory, this is a good way to get your SEO feet wet. If you are looking to truly do a deep dive into SEO, we suggest checking out Distilled U which is far more robust and comprehensive.
- Find time for your mental health: Planet Fitness is offering complimentary in-home workouts or if you’re looking to get a little cultural boost from your living room, check out the Broadway musicals and plays that are streaming for free.
How can you help in a big way?
These days everyone is wondering what they can do to help. Need an idea? Check out what our digital marketers have been up to!
Our Hero Conf team member, Briana Ogle is helping at her local hospital. Check with your local hospitals to see if they are taking volunteers or hiring nurse assistants. More than likely, they’ll take any help they can get and there are a variety of positions they’ll hire for that don’t require any previous experience.
Other Hero Conf and Hanapin team members are donating blood. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak we now have a critical need for blood. Go here to donate: Red Cross
Our very own account manager, Jenna Kelly is sewing masks for healthcare workers. If you have the materials and ability to sew, get more information in this Forbes article: Calling All People Who Sew And Make: You Can Help Make Masks For 2020 Healthcare Worker PPE Shortage
Jenna also made a follow-along video for those needing a visual aid!
Our 3 Step Approach To Managing Paid Media During a Crisis
During a time when fear-driven decisions are taking over, we’ve taken a step back to create a process that helps us rationally address the crisis at hand.
If information and insights were gold before, now they are platinum. Work on projections and revenue forecasting and try to answer the following questions: What does your floor look like? What does your ceiling look like?
The new normal could last anywhere from 3-5 months or longer. Once isolation guidelines are lifted, the economy won’t magically bounce back right away. This is why we have to be prepared to settle in and realistically assess this new normal. The big question is what can you reasonably spend, and what will the returns be on that spend.
We simply don’t know the future, but we certainly can make an estimate, create a shell of an outline, and be prepared to execute. As we are all looking to ramp back up, keep in mind, other programs are doing the same thing and competition will be high.
What’s your challenge?
We feel what you feel and during this time it’s up to us to all help each other. Marketer to marketer, we get the gut-wrenching feeling of working through a pandemic and it’s tough. If you’re stuck, email us. We are happy to have a conversation and find you extra resources. marketing@hanapinmarketing.com
As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.
