Although many businesses have been impacted due to COVID-19, several businesses have also seen significant growth.
Just because some businesses aren’t able to operate at their previous levels presently, if their financials and business models are solid, there’s a huge opportunity to lay the platform to come out stronger on the other side of this crisis.
As many competitors pause their marketing spend, you have a unique opportunity to close the gap, or even overtake competitors when this crisis eventually abates.
I’ve seen several clients in all industries re-purposing their marketing spend from channels that provide immediate results such as paid advertising into channels that provide long term benefits and effective brand building such as SEO.
It can often be a daunting task for business owners to invest in marketing in times such as this, as many can’t see the “light at the end of the tunnel”, but below are some of the reasons I believe a crisis is a great time to invest in SEO:
1. Your Brand needs to stay visible
Your online brand is an extremely valuable component of your business. Much of the traffic your business will receive is “branded” traffic. That is, those search terms that searchers are using to directly search for your business.
In a crisis, it’s even more important your brand shines through relative to your competitors. SEO is generally the highest generator of branded traffic, so it’s important to keep building your brand in the search engines via SEO during a crisis.
2. Search behaviour is changing rapidly
The post crisis “new normal” can never be effectively compared to the pre crisis state. A business’ search traffic and conversions must be effectively reset during the crisis.
In the past, we would measure search performance in a month-on-month, or year-on-year basis, now most professionals are measuring metrics on a week-on-week basis.
During these rapidly changing times, it’s imperative to adjust your SEO strategy to an agile one, taking advantage of the ever present opportunities in your industry. An example is restaurants and cafes that should focus their SEO on takeaway and delivery services as well as a strong local SEO focus. These shifts and pivots online are only possible if you continue to invest during the crisis.
3. Your business still need leads
Even though revenues are impacted, businesses still need leads generated to ensure the viability of your business for the future. SEO should be a significant lead generation activity for every business and continued investment is essential to keep leads coming at a sustainable pace. Now is not the time to let your competitors out-perform your digital marketing efforts.
4. You have the time to create content
As business is slower for many businesses, there’s a unique opportunity to create content that will serve your business well for the future. This could be content that you’ll publish now, or evergreen content that can be used for the rest of this year and beyond.
5. Your copywriters, photographers and videographers will have capacity
Take advantage of copywriters and videographers that aren’t as busy as usual and could do with some extra work. You’ll get excellent service from your content generators and will be able to fast track much of the content that has been sitting on the “back burner” waiting for a good time to take action.
6. SEO takes time to see results
Search Engine Optimisation takes months to see the fruits of your labour. By investing now, by the time the crisis is over, you’ll have the SEO fundamentals in place and can start to build a solid platform that will deliver leads for many years to come. This will also put your business in a great position to out-perform your competitors after the crisis.
TL;DR
In summary, a crisis is a great time to invest in SEO and other long-term marketing efforts. These efforts will put your business in a great position to enjoy maximum advantage relative to competitors when the crisis is over.
David Sorauer M.T.M, B.App.Sci (Comp Info Tech) is our principal Digital Marketing & SEO consultant and has over 15 years of experience providing digital services in the Asia Pacific region.