The government of British Columbia has announced its plan to restart the economy following the COVID-19 quarantine that accelerated an economic downturn. Many governments around the globe are either developing similar plans or implementing them already.
Now that we have a clear path of action, the question business owners are faced with is how fast do they need to increase their advertising budgets?
First of all, if your business hasn’t stopped advertising during the lockdown, congratulations, you are in a great position. Based on past data, businesses that keep advertising during economic downturns recover faster than businesses that stop advertising altogether. However, not all companies could keep their marketing budgets intact. In fact, many businesses decide to cut their marketing budgets as soon as the economy starts shrinking.
In the case of the pandemic, the decisions were made almost overnight.
Here are a few examples of ads larger market players decided to run to stay top-of-mind:
Uber
Timberland
Hello BC
Budweiser
So how did the advertising landscape change in the past couple of months?
You have probably seen that Instagram launched gift cards and fundraising tools, LinkedIn made its new Events tool available for all company pages, and even Pinterest added a new shopping feature to their platform. All in the hopes of helping small and medium-sized businesses stay afloat and reach their suddenly homebound customers.
Looking at data from multiple sources, we can see that the average time spent on mobile apps and social media platforms have significantly increased. The trend makes sense, as the majority of us are isolating at home and have more free time on our hands. Furthermore, people are relying on social media platforms, especially Facebook, for the latest news. Users spend 52.9 minutes on average every day consuming news on Facebook. Even looking at Glacier Media’s first-party data, we see that the number of visitors to our community websites has skyrocketed.
Despite such growth in organic views, Facebook reported that 89% of advertisers have taken action with their budgets in response to COVID-19; with 45% of them saying that they have adjusted media type usage or shifted budget among media types.
Where people see despairing data, we at GMD, see an opportunity for our clients to swoop in and gain more customers while their competitors are relaxing at home. Personally, I have seen a significant drop in cost-per-click on Facebook for many advertisers. This graph from Gupta Media just reaffirms my observations:
As you can see, Facebook’s CPM dipped below $2, which is considerably lower than their global average. Meaning it is more cost-effective to advertise on Facebook now than ever. Users are spending a lot of time online and the cost of advertising dropped. What else can we wish for?
Now that life in BC is slowly returning back to normal, this is the time for businesses to use the lower costs-per-click on social media channels and reach out to their customers. Making sure that your business is top-of-mind is even more crucial during the economic recession.
If you want to discuss various advertising opportunities on social media, GMD’s team of Social Ads Strategists, including myself, are always happy to assist you. Click here to get in touch.