Keeping in touch…thinking about your business comeback strategy

Christine Lovelace, Hibu’s Sr. Product Training Manager, talks about some of the results our small business advertising clients have seen during COVID-19… and how some of them have seen their clicks, calls and conversions stay steady or even increase as consumers spend more time online.

Find out why now is the time to start thinking about your “comeback” strategy, whether that means going back to business as usual… a new normal… or just making the most of the local consumers who are still looking for the products and services they need right now.

[Video transcript]

Hi, I’m Christine from Hibu, and I’m coming to you live from my home office here in New York, on Long Island.

I realized that many of you, too, are also operating out of your home office. In fact, our entire organization is doing this right now nationwide. And here we are nine weeks into the crisis. And one month, two months ago, things were really uncertain for all of us. And it was no finish line in sight. And a lot of medium and small businesses like yourself will have to wonder what should I do right now?

Well, the good news is now there is a finish line in sight. And your state is either opening back up, or they’re laying out their plan for their reopening and that means as a local business, the time to take action is right now, the time to figure out your comeback strategy is right now. And what we’ve seen here at Hibu over the course of the last nine weeks has been really interesting, to say the least.

We’ve seen clients of other digital companies, as well as clients of our very own, pause or even cancel their digital marketing strategies, because they didn’t know what the future would hold, and maybe they weren’t even able to operate. And we’ve seen and we’ve helped many of our clients actually pivot their business strategy to shift focus to who they can help today, and how they could help them. And we aligned all of their messaging to promote that. And ultimately, from an industry perspective, we’ve seen internet usage skyrocket, especially in entities of social media like Facebook and Instagram. We’ve seen search volumes hold really steady nationwide on Google, in the height of the pandemic, consumer still looking for your products and services. And we’ve seen higher conversion rates in terms of calls to businesses. We’ve seen more inquiry forms filled out and sent to businesses as well through their website. And those businesses that remained in the game, they saw great benefit. They actually saw a lower cost per leads as a result, because a lot of businesses pulled their dollars from the marketplace. And there were businesses out there that put things on hold. And they were sitting on a sideline temporarily. And our own data reveals, actually, that cost per click to deliver ads, and lower cost per lead to businesses across both search, social and even display advertising, versus pre COVID-19 data and a window to take advantage of this. It still exists, but it’s starting to close down on us, it’s starting to get smaller, and there’s never been a greater time to get your message out there. While usage is up and costs are down.

Your comeback can be greater than this setback as a local business with the right digital marketing strategy, one that’s synchronized, and one that has consistency and messaging across all properties and platforms online. We’d welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with you and one of our specialists, and we can share with you how this data can impact your business and what we’ve done. For other companies just like you, throughout the nation, that are still marketing during these times, and ultimately get you ready for your 30 / 60 / 90-day plan, where you can start to ask yourself, how am I going to come out of this as a local business? How strong will my comeback be? And ultimately, we’ll put together a strategy for you that makes sense.

So thank you for your time today. I hope that you’re doing well. I hope your family’s well and I hope everybody there at your business is doing well too.