The coronavirus pandemic continues to have a severe impact on everyone’s lives, from businesses to schooling, no one has been left unscathed from this epidemic. This has been especially difficult for small business owners who need to find the right opportunity to help them develop close relationships with their customer base while maintaining a respectable amount of space. These trying times are making everyone come up with ways they can continue to promote their business.
Fortunately, advertising online has become an art during the past decade, and with everyone online, you’ll potentially be able to attract new customers. With everyone spending the majority online, it’s a great time to ramp up your advertising strategy and target not only your current customers but new ones as well. Facebook and Instagram are the two places most people are spending their time keeping in touch with one another, and it’s your chance to start spreading your brand to these individuals.
For this article, we’ll be going over some of the top strategies you can use for Facebook and Instagram advertising during this pandemic.
Develop brand awareness
With the massive amount of people staying indoors, you’ll most likely see more potential customers browsing online to stay connected with one another and pass the time. As two of the most popular social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram will most likely see an increase in website traffic during the coming weeks. With the number of impressions and the alteration in the competition, your cost per impression will most likely decrease. Fortunately, this does offer you a great chance to capture more reach within your budget limit for Instagram and Facebook.
If you are capable of coming up with plans for your advertising strategy ahead of time, you should be able to capture tons of people when they are searching for all sorts of content to stave off their boredom. The content you provide them with should be capable of serving them some kind of value to the product or services you give and how it can benefit them once they’re prepared to buy once the quarantine is done or plan to in the coming future.
Most importantly, try to keep your customer base engaged with anything you can think of. From the latest news revolving around your business and encourage them to help you during these times with several activities, such as:
Leaving positive feedback
- Plenty of customers who’ve used your service or purchased a product will most likely follow your company’s social media profile. Consider reaching out to them and asking them to leave a review on how their experience went. Not every one of your customers may have left a review in the past, but now that many of them are spending a good percentage of their time browsing through Instagram and Facebook, they’ll most likely see the request and leave something behind. Even if some of the reviews are negative, try to turn it into something positive by apologizing to them and reaching out to them to inquire about what you can do to improve your business.
Online discount sales
- Plenty of people live paycheck to paycheck, and that can make it hard to purchase what they need to survive. With this growing pandemic, most people are out of jobs and barely have any cash to get by due to the closing of most businesses. Consider giving your customer base a discount on goods or services to develop your brand’s reputation with not only existing customers but new ones as well. This will ensure you can retain most of them even after the pandemic has passed, with most of them having a positive experience due to the discount you have offered.
Gift cards
- Offer your users a chance to purchase gift cards for friends and family members. This will allow them to give something to friends and family members who are struggling with getting by to buy a product from your store. You can spread the message on both Facebook and Instagram by notifying both existing customers and new ones to know about your business having a gift card for use. You can also offer your customers a $20 gift card once they’ve spent a certain amount since they’re most likely to spend a few extra items to meet the requirements. Plus, if they do end up giving it to someone else, that’s a new potential customer for your business.
Delivery orders/curbside pickup
- Plenty of people are too worried about going out but wish to seriously purchase something and receiving without going out and catching the deadly virus. Restaurants are especially vital during these times since most people will be craving for particular types of food, or they might not know how to cook. For example, most restaurants are staying open and are proposing to deliver the meals by leaving the package on the curbside for pickup. Use your Instagram and Facebook account to let people know you are offering this type of service during these trying times. This will not only help you continue running your business but potentially gain new customers as well.
- Even if you are not in a business that offers some shop that sells goods or services, consider compiling a list of places that are offering these delivery services and posting them on your social media accounts. You’ll be providing your customers with the information they may not have known and boost your brand’s reputation. Plus, you likely have those services thanking you and reposting the list with their own customers as well.
- Improving your brand awareness during these trying times is crucial, especially for smaller and local businesses, so don’t hesitate to apply those strategies.
Use Facebook and Instagram Live Video
Facebook and Instagram both have a program that allows people to stream live through their profile to their followers. This is an excellent way for businesses to communicate with their customers online, especially those who are struggling to change strategies and offer their wares and services online. Even if switching your services towards the internet is impossible, you can remain in contact with your customers with Facebook and Instagram Live.
By launching a live video, you’ll be able to remain connected with your customer base more directly and authentically. Video marketing has proven to be an effective way to reach out to customers, and if you haven’t implemented this into your advertising strategy, now’s the time to do so. Facebook and Instagram have proven that live videos receive a higher engagement rate than pre-recorded videos. All you need to do is grab your smartphone and launch the streaming service to draw in your customers.
Individuals who are currently in self-isolation or at least following the social distancing rule will search for opportunities to make contact with other people face to face. While live videos are the same as direct contact, it’s still one of the few solutions offering ways for people to interact with one another, and it’s one of the many experiences your customer base is longing for.
Take the time to show your customers that you are in the same boat as them and provide them with answers to questions they may be wondering about your services. Answer a few questions during real-time, conduct a webinar, provide online demos, offer online check-ins, and anything else you can come up with to keep your customers up-to-date with the latest happening surrounding your business.
To ensure your live event is successful, consider launching the stream in high-resolution and clear illumination. If you’re not sure how your set up will look to the viewers, take some practice videos to identify the kind of changes you have to make to improve the quality of your live event. Don’t overstress about requiring the most reliable equipment and such, the main point of streaming yourself is to provide an authentic experience to your brand, so just pick up your phone and give it a shot.
Remarketing campaigns
It’s been proven time and time again that customers will usually abandon a website without finalizing the item they were interested in purchasing. With the number of people living vicariously online, now is the best time to get in contact with these individuals who previously visited your website and get them back onto your brand by providing them with various incentives, such as special promotions or discounts. Pulling this off is especially crucial for any business that is currently seeing an increase in traffic at the moment, such as food and health delivery brands.
Reach out to them by posting on both your Facebook and Instagram with a picture of your wares and how much you are offering for it at the moment. Or emphasize the fact that you are providing free shipping for any product they purchase from your stores. This will ensure they not only accept these amazing deals but encourage them to spread it to others who they may deem interested in your product as well.
Along with driving more visitors to your website, you can generate new leads and sales by testing engagement custom audiences, which grants you the opening to target users who have beforehand interacted with your content throughout Instagram and Facebook. This should also include remarketing to people who’ve previously liked, commented on, shared, or engaged with your Facebook and Instagram accounts, watched any of your videos, or have filled out any forms. Keep in mind that the more relatable you become, the higher your engagement rate will become.
Discover new leads and develop your email marketing
If your company is either online or a local business, there is a high probability that you are already sending out emails to ensure you can retain your customers and keep them updated with the latest newsletter. If your business is experiencing a downturn or closed at the moment, this can become a fantastic opportunity to divert your attention to acquiring new leads and emails in the place of encouraging sales.
Facebook and Instagram both are both capable of a lead ad campaign here are some things you should consider doing while the time is ripe:
- Gain the interest of your audience with content.
- Raise your leads ad signups rate for email newsletters.
- Acquire a customer-base to remarket at a later time.
For example, let’s say you work in the health and wellness industry, this is an excellent opportunity to promote a 30-day mental health challenge that your followers can easily subscribe to. Or if you are selling a type of product, you can encourage your customers to subscribe and become the first people to know about any upcoming deals, new products, and anything you consider important enough to keep them aware of.
Something you should keep in mind when implementing this strategy. Make sure when you are improving your lead generation plan, you request too much information. Customers have been known to back away if they are bombarded with a massive form to fill out. Stick with the usual form and make sure it remains no less than two fields, such as their name and contact info.
Also, make sure you integrate with your Customer Relationship Management system to provide and create your welcome newsletter to make sure that you can quickly follow up with content that is related to your advertising.
Conclusion
These are some of the best strategies you can implement into advertising strategies on Facebook and Instagram. Keep in mind that this coronavirus epidemic is only temporary, and soon enough, everyone will be back to full swing. At most, people will have to stay a month longer inside, but once they’ve all gone back to work, they’ll remember the brands that provided them with sweet deals and content to get through those difficult times. This will ensure they manage to repay you by returning to your service or at least spreading awareness of your business to others they think will benefit from said businesses.
Now that you’re done reading this, go out there and start driving your advertising campaign to a whole new level.
