Inbound In The Time Of COVID - 19 (Or Should We Call It 20?)

I have been meaning to do this for quite some time now.

Q1 is over. But the pandemic is still growing. And marketing strategies, across organizations (except that of Zoom of course), are changing. 

So, I thought this could be a perfect time to reflect on how Q1 has been and ways to approach marketing in Q2.

But before I begin, I’d like to share a small story with you all.

Few years back, I was working as an assistant director for BBC Productions. And one of my job functionalities was to ensure that shooting props, to be used on the shooting place, are always ready before the shoot for every scene begins. In one of the off-site shoots, I forgot to ask about the props from the production guys and assumed that they must have already been loaded in the cars. Once at the destination and right before the shoot was to begin, the director asked me about the props. And it was then that I realized that my assumption has cost me big time.

The Director told me only one thing, “you should never make an Ass (of) U (and) Me.”

I’ll talk about the significance of this story a little later. Before that, here’s a look at how Q1 has been for the WebEngage Inbound Marketing side.

Traffic:

One of the great things that happened, in the aftermath of the pandemic, was we did not see a huge drop in our inbound traffic. While just like most of the companies, we’ve been affected too but it was very heartening to see that the years of efforts that we have put in to build all the content is now helping us with a stable and steady inbound traffic.

Newsletter Subscribers:

A few weeks back I had shared a post (https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/vicky-jain_saas-userengagement-marketing-activity-6640216045997088768-EiVa) about the growing numbers of subscribers to our content, and the best part is it's still growing like ?? - All-time high monthly newsletter subscribers. This has happened mainly because of the fundamental marketing thought-process of building user engagement and providing value rather than selling.

The methodology here is very simple, you have to bring up the impact you are creating for the community. We now serve a community of more than 60K subscribers who are Marketers, Product guys, Communication specialists, and CXOs. The growth has a direct reflection on our other marketing funnels that we are building.

Our content authority has been around solving problems that are now considered to be at the core of customers marketing success. Authority that has grown rapidly through the years now. Love the perfect harmony of what's growing and what you're building.

Paid:

For #saasmarketers handling paid marketing operations; yes, even we’re witnessing a steady dip in CPC. 

But if your organization can still help you with a practical budget, you can actually use it to great benefits in the current market situation, i.e., by using the insight that CTRs & CPMs are going up big time.

The opportunity of witnessing such a situation comes rarely with huge drop in CPC across platforms and an increase in impression share is indeed a window of possibilities to double down on operation with higher ROAS.

Go all-in if you are doing search and competitive search ads. Try to revisit your copy and make changes that most experts will suggest. Listen to at least one podcast or webinar every day on content that talks about how to improve messaging, tactics and strategies.

If you are working on platforms like GoogleAds, Linkedin, Drift, Adroll, ABM platforms, inbound research platforms like SemRush, Ahrefs, try talking to their account experts. I have been getting the best type of advice on campaign suggestions and management right now from these account managers than anyone else. As everyone is getting into the whole provide value get value thing, we as marketers are going to get benefited the most.

Tools:

As with most of the companies, we’re also pulling down our tools budget - means either doing away with or downgrading most of our tools. 

But how can these tools providers act in such a scenario, especially when most of their clients would be doing the same?

The answer lies in providing the best product value with the lowest grade plan. At this point in time, it could be a great idea for these providers to offer their clients with a low cost offering. The point to be noted is that businesses need tools and softwares to keep their operations running and the doing away of tools is mostly because of the current situations and not a universal phenomenon. 

In fact, Software subscription companies have started witnessing that 60% to 80% of their revenue shifted to the low tier plans. Hence, offering a reduced pricing should be something not only acceptable but also will be appreciated by your clients.

Here are a few strategies that we have implemented, in the wake of the current situation.

Build even more top of the funnel leads for the coming quarters. A lot of your marketing strategy will be dependent on the runway you have and you need to focus on the industries that are booming, industries that are over-performing.

Some Data on this,

References:

https://www.semrush.com/blog/market-winners-losers-coronavirus/

https://www.statista.com/page/covid-19-coronavirus

There will be a huge spike for certain business models like subscription and the only downside is how many customers will stay or go out of business. If you have a small runway, start building pipeline, stop spending on platforms that has no ROAS. Those fancy MQL numbers will not get you anywhere.

Suggested Strategies :

1. Targeted Remarketing
2. Brand Awareness
3. ABM - via Linkedin, ListenLoop, Bing Search Ads
4. Industry-Specific Inbound Activity
5. Email Automation - Send at leads one email a day to stay in the users' inbox, should be clean and to the point.
6. Create funnels to find the conversion of your MQL activity
7. Quality List Building (Pre & Post)

Try talking to your friends from both the booming and floundering industries like Travel, Retail/Ecomm, Food Tech, SaaS and others. 

Going back to my “prop story”, you’ll hear many marketers these days unanimously agree that industries like gaming or virtual conferencing, edtech, fintech and others are booming. Sure, they do seem like industries not adversely affected with the current downturn. But is that a universal phenomenon?

I recently got to know, from a friend working in an Edtech firm, that his company has seen a huge number of requests for refund, as the courses are on the higher side of pricing. Also, that same company has decided to lay off a number of employees as well, to maintain its runway into the next few months. Now what would you say about that?

Hence, rather than acting on mere assumptions, it's better to stay connected, know the reality and stay away from what everyone is collectively supporting - now more than ever.

Keep Building & Keep Executing ??