What the Corona Virus (COVID-19) means for entrepreneurs
You have now heard of the corona virus.
The sad reality is that it is spreading quickly and will continue to spread for a while.
Did you know that we receive around 13,000 new cases every day and they are growing rapidly?
No one really knows how many people will be infected (or will, unfortunately, die), but it has caused global stock markets to crash, which means that you as a company (or even a marketer) are affected.
And since my advertising agency works with hundreds of companies in all major sectors and we have 7 offices around the world, we are already seeing how this affects marketing (I will share the following data).
What does that mean for you?
Before I go into that, I want to clarify what marketers should NOT do.
Don't take advantage of the situation
The first thing we see are people trying to take advantage of fear.
By that I mean that supplies are running low around the world. From masks and toilet paper to hand disinfectants to other basic needs … I see marketers who buy them and then resell them on eBay or place advertisements and sell them for 10 to 50 times the price.
This is not entrepreneurship and not marketing. I strongly recommend that you do not take advantage of the coronavirus situation to make money quickly.
Not only is it wrong, it's also very short-sighted. Sure, you may be able to make money quickly, but it won't last. You should better use your time for anything that is long-term.
What does the corona virus mean for marketers after we get it out of the way?
Businesses will struggle for a while
Even if the virus slows down rapidly as China's numbers go down, businesses will have problems for well over a year because they have to make up for their losses.
In China, for example, the virus caused retail sales to drop 20.5% and the unemployment rate rose to 6.2 in February.
When companies like Apple close their stores to narrow the spread, it means less income and less profit. Sure, they can pay their employees during their temporary closure, but not all companies have their account balance and most of them won't be able to do the same.
Just look at the travel industry. The virus is expected to lose $ 820 billion. Virgin Atlantic has just asked its employees to take an 8 week unpaid vacation.
The ports are also empty and the first rounds of layoffs have already started.
It is estimated that COVID-19 will cost the global economy a total of $ 2.7 trillion.
And people not only lose money, they also lose traffic and conversions.
Organic transport is declining in most industries
As mentioned above, we work with hundreds of clients in various industries through my agency. In addition, due to ubersuggest, we also have tons of data.
Before I look at the data, note that we have not focused on a single country. We decide to look at traffic statistics from a global perspective. We also did not collect data from websites with fewer than 5000 visitors per month, as they tend to fluctuate dramatically from a percentage point of view, even if there are no global problems or algorithm updates.
We also have no data on each industry, for example we don't really work with many restaurants and we don't buy data for that category because local restaurants usually don't have the largest marketing budgets. We have data on most, but not all, of the important ones.
From an SEO perspective, last week we saw a huge drop in organic traffic in most of the industries we're tracking. Just look at the table below (compared to last week to the previous week).
When you're in the news or finance business, your traffic has skyrocketed.
And when you are in the travel industry, you have seen massive traffic declines.
You can't tell from the table, but e-commerce was a mixed thing, depending on which websites were sold, traffic was either up or down. For example, if you sold baby products like diapers or towels, you saw a nice bump in traffic.
But if you sold luxury goods like big screen TVs, you saw a decrease in traffic.
Sales were also down in most industries
From a conversion rate perspective, we also saw declines in most industries. Even the financial sector, which saw a huge boom in traffic, saw a decline in conversions.
Just look at the table below (compared to last week with the previous week):
News (media) websites have had a large conversion lift, as many of them charge fees for reading their updated information.
For example, you can only read a certain amount of content from the Washington Post for free until you see a message that looks like this:
People didn't want to do without the corona virus, political and financial information with the turmoil, so the news sites saw a nice upswing.
And with some sectors like travel, they're currently offering massive discounts, which helps counter some of their traffic declines. Overall, they are still experiencing a massive drop in sales.
Pay per click data
We don't have as much pay-per-click data as we do for SEO, since Ubersuggest is mainly used for SEO purposes, but we haven't noticed any major shifts in cost per click … even for things like the travel industry.
We don't have a large enough sample, but as mentioned earlier, the cost hasn't dropped significantly.
Although the number of people looking for flights or hotels has decreased significantly, the CPC has not dropped dramatically, but the cost per acquisition has increased significantly.
In other words, you can still pay roughly the same amount per click, but the cost per conversion has increased in most industries … unless you sell supplies like toilet paper.
What does that mean for marketers?
Be anxious when others are greedy and greedy when others are anxious
I didn't come up with this saying, it's actually a line from Warren Buffett.
You will see people decline as the economy is expected to hit $ 2.7 trillion and experts say we will go into recession.
They even have billionaire investors like Carl Ichan who say the market has more room to decline and we should expect the sellout to take longer.
However, I learned from two crashes (the dotcom crash in 2000 and the real estate crash in 2008) that the best time to double is when others don't.
During an economic downturn, you will find that you have less competition, which means that it is easier and faster to get results, and in some cases you can do business, such as a possible reduction in pay-per-click advertising .
Think of it this way: Of all listed companies in the United States, many of them will struggle to pay their debts, which have exploded to $ 75 trillion as the market continues to decline.
This means that some companies will either go bankrupt, be bought up, or be saved by the government. Some may be able to cut costs far enough to pay their bills, but for most it will be too late.
This also means less competition for you.
If you're lucky enough to be on cash during the recession, this is the best time to buy other companies. The ideal ones to buy are media companies.
The more eyeballs you control, the more power you will have in the future. By controlling eyeballs, you can also sell anything you want in the future.
That's why I bought the KISSmetrics website for $ 500,000 a few years ago. During their peak, they had 1,260,681 million monthly visitors.
That's a lot of traffic.
I had a lot of money for myself when I bought the website, but when I merged it into the NeilPatel.com website, I increased my lead count by 19% and made up for my investment in less than a year.
In other words, this is your opportunity to strike and gain market share.
So when you see your competitors closing or slowing down their marketing, the goal is to double. You may not see the greatest return immediately, but in the long run you will.
Every time the market drops 20% or more, it takes about 536 days to recover. And we don't even know how far we'll go or when the ground will be.
As we recover, your earnings will increase and your marketing spend ROI will increase.
Conclusion
Hopefully the corona virus will go away soon and have minimal impact on life. For now, try not to get in touch with others too much or go to crowded places.
You should read this Washington Post article because it contains great simulations of coronavirus spread and measures to reduce its impact on the world.
And as far as your marketing is concerned, this is the time for you to double. Don't be afraid when others are afraid too. Do what Warren Buffett does … be greedy when other people are scared.
In other words, double up.
How did you see that the corona virus affects your traffic?
PS: Please be safe and stay inside if possible.
PPS: To help a little, I opened the Ubersuggest keyword ideas report and historical keyword data. I know that many of you may face financial difficulties. So hopefully if you have the data, you can save a bit of money on marketing.