Advertising in times of coronavirus

It is a fact, COVID-19 has affected all economic sectors, including advertising. Companies have had to modify their budgets and expenditure forecasts. and as on many other occasions, the cutback directly affects the area of marketing and advertising, despite the fact that at this time it is most needed for to differentiate themselves from the competition and gain notoriety among customers.

How has the pandemic affected advertising behaviour?

In recent months, it has been observed that the investment made through applications that offer online video content, such as Netflix and television channels, has had to be adapt to this new reality. Ads about travel, hotel chains or cars were the worst performers. However, ads about Hobbies and Interests, Technology, Education and Pets have seen a notable increase.

The offline advertising is the worst offender. Investments in this type of advertising have come to a halt and the budget is now directly allocated to digital platforms. According to a survey carried out by Ebiquity, the 81% of brands have decided to reduce their offline ad spend This year, three out of four brands have cancelled outdoor (73%) and cinema (72%) advertising.

Nevertheless, the online area continues to grow32% of brands increase their investment and only 25% reduce spending.

What information is of interest and how to act?

This is the perfect time to improve brand image. In this situation, values and content focused on positivity and self-improvement is what is captivating consumers. To capture attention, you can:

Interacting with users through the different social networks, asking them about their situation, designing challenges or launching a sweepstakes. Make your content entertain your users.
Respond to them publicly to all your doubts, both in RRSS and Google My Business (the great forgotten one).
Update your Google My Business profileIf you have any feedback, respond to users who have left a review, thank them and take into account their recommendations for improvement, upload photos of your business and your products.
Provides "free products".The aim of the campaign is to promote the use of the campaign, tips or a service that does not generate a cost for the company in order to try to make it viral.
Use a close vocabularyThe report is positive and tries to add a touch of humour to it. In this situation, consumers do not like to read about more tragedies.
Create your own webinars or live events in which you can teach and entertain your users. You can find a multitude of examples, for example, there are restaurants that are showing some of their recipes and challenging users to recreate and share them.
Experiment with other social networksDon't be afraid to make a mistake, use platforms such as Youtube or Tik Tok.
Empathise with your audience.

In short, it tries to sell you, but not directly. An example that has gone viral and is considered one of the best advertisements of recent times is that of Bankinter. They have managed to excite and empathise with the public and go viral by "discreetly" advertising their services.

How much can it cost me to promote myself?

Campaigns can be run on social media from 5 euros per dayThe price is affordable considering the impact that can be achieved. However, for there to be an impact, you need those campaigns are well targeted and well designedIt is therefore always better to have them done by specialised professionals in order to get the most out of them.

When talking about cost by publication and social network, there is no fixed priceThere are a number of characteristics that will cause the price to vary. It will depend on the platform you choose to promote on, the country and the type of bidding. For Facebook, you can choose between CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per action). And on Instagram it varies depending on the day and time, with the average price per click ranging from €0.60 to €0.80.