One-year insights into coronavirus

We always say that even when there are problems and challenges, it’s okay as long as you learn from it and draw conclusions. The past year of Corona undoubtedly posed countless challenges and was felt in every business, but as they say, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the potential for learning: How does our business run digitally on an ongoing basis, in an emergency? What are our potentials? How will we run from today? What digital transformation processes do we need? All these and many other questions have arisen and also been successfully answered in the past year, and we are happy to share the insights with you here:

Status assessment

The Corona pandemic and the changes it brought have not left any business in exactly the same situation as before. Businesses can be divided into several types: businesses that have profited and grown due to the situation (mainly in the areas of food and beverage, computing, e-commerce, etc.); businesses that have experienced a decrease in activity and have adapted to the new situation; And businesses that have been hit hard to the point of a complete standstill. There are a number of sectors and professions that, unfortunately, due to the situation, have come to a complete standstill.

It is important to note that businesses that invested in digital infrastructure and a good e-commerce infrastructure in advance were able to survive well even during the Corona pandemic and during the closures in particular. We saw this clearly among some of our clients who chose to invest in e-commerce and digital infrastructure that helped them get through this challenging year.

Of course, many businesses have added products, established infrastructures, and reinvented themselves. We won’t go into this in detail in this article, because the topic has already been discussed enough. Nevertheless, it is a necessary step in running a business during this period: it is clear that a conference can become a digital asset, and it is clear that a physical sale can become an online sale. So instead of going into the same topics that we have already covered in detail, we will try to share some other insights.

Reply

The year of Corona forced many businesses to thoroughly define their products from the ground up. What are our needs? Leads? Online course sales? Ecommerce? Branding? With our backs to the wall, we saw many businesses focus on products and services and focus all their activities – which, from our perspective, is a welcome move. Before Corona, business flowed smoothly from phones, a physical audience, recommendations, and a variety of marketing channels that were difficult for the customer to distinguish between. But during the lockdown, everything focused and became clearer, and digital of course – and in particular its goals – became more present.

First of all, our recommendation to all clients and the general business community was and remains – don’t stop! As long as the business exists and can, it needs to market. Of course, you can change the dosage and mix of advertising, but if possible – it’s better not to stop. Why? First of all, advertising systems unequivocally prefer advertisers who advertise continuously. Continuous advertising maintains a high and necessary score. If you stop, after returning you may experience a slowdown that will take weeks and even months to fix, both in SEO processes and in sponsored promotion processes. SEO processes take many months and in our opinion, a break is not recommended if it is possible and possible to continue them. Those who have promoted throughout this year have come out on top, and in a moment we will demonstrate and detail right here. Another important thing to consider is that if competitors advertise, they will capture a larger market share. And another important thing to remember – in social media we develop complex and long-term relationships between our brand and the target audience, including building sympathy and interest that need to survive even during a crisis.

First of all, we will need to understand how to adapt the messages to the new situation: Dynamic and fast message accuracy is critical for changes between a routine emergency and a lockdown. Flexibility and agility are essential if we want to enable a rapid response to changing situations. Message accuracy is critical. For example, if your competitors provide deliveries within 10 business days, a message of “delivery to you within 24 hours” can bring a big change in your results. A variety of messages were and still are necessary for us, whether it is business as usual, or whether it is a marketing message that comes to clarify what problem we can solve for our customers at this time?

It goes without saying that during a lockdown, this is the time to invest in content, simply interesting, relevant, and engaging content.

It is estimated that the time our customers spend on mobile devices during the lockdown has increased by hundreds of percent.

Sales, gentlemen, sales

We talk about the subject at length, but the Israeli audience is an audience that unequivocally prefers sales and promotions. The Corona period has made this conclusion clearer than ever. Many businesses and brands have entered a state of “permanent sale”, in which, as usual, we are 20% off the entire store. The extent of the discounts, of course, varies from sector to sector depending on the model and viability, but we clearly saw that the brands that adapted themselves to the new situation had a beautiful and impressive response.

Digital laboratory experiments

After we have refined the messages, we need to direct the right budgets and campaigns. First of all, in our opinion, it is best to leave critical core campaigns such as brand campaigns, remarketing, and basic awareness so that the business continues to stand out during this period as well. Beyond the core campaigns – this is where it gets interesting. All the rules have changed, and now we can examine in depth how the business functions in extreme situations that we could only imagine testing before, and even then not as effectively as in this real-time experiment.

What happens when all the branches of a chain close and there is only online? What happens when all the other advertising channels of the brand close? No walk-ins, no random phone calls and there is only digital? What happens when a client closes 3 local campaigns and 2 campaigns abroad, and focuses their entire budget on one strong campaign in Israel and an extremely profitable product?

Well, the answer is very interesting – we see results, and we see them in a very clear and measurable way, even more than usual. Many businesses have learned that they function better with a new workforce or in a different situation. We even have clients who simply closed the physical office because they finally realized that it was not needed, or as we like to say – That meeting could have been an Email.

Are customers not wasting money?

Definitely yes. We saw a big increase in online sales. Many online stores jumped during the closures by 50%, 100% and in extreme cases even 900%. Surfers are buying in large volumes, including products that are far from being emergency equipment, such as jewelry, accessories, and more. Of course, the reality is not simple And there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed people, households whose income has dropped by half, and a variety of difficult situations. But on the other hand, there are closed shopping malls that lead to a jump in other areas, families who have accumulated disposable income due to the cessation of entertainment, spending, and shopping. An important point to remember – as long as the skies are closed, even partially, there are also fewer flights, and hence there is a lot of disposable income among the flying public who also do not purchase airline tickets or shop abroad. We assume that the Israeli spends most of their disposable income on flights and shopping abroad. Fortunately, this is not the case at the moment and the public is actually shopping more in Israel and shopping less abroad. (Not that we are against tourism or traveling abroad, we are simply in favor of local purchases)

How do surfers behave during the lockdown, and why organic promotion is critical

Given the lockdown, the customers are at home. And at home, as mentioned, they spend more hours on their mobile phones, hundreds of percent more hours. And what are they doing? Searching. We have observed a clear increase in search volumes in all the different closures. For example, a phrase such as “wooden spoon,” which in a normal month is searched for by about 250 Israelis, jumped to 700 searches in the first closure, and to 980 searches in the second closure. This is not a seasonal trend. Just to illustrate, here is the search graph for “wooden spoon” between 2020 and 2021.