What is a PPC Agency’s Role During a Pandemic? Three Thoughts.
“What is our competition doing right now?”
“We don’t want to come off as tone-deaf or insensitive with our ads.”
“We don’t want sales to tank, but orders are down due to COVID-19. I don’t think pausing all ads is the right thing to do, but we can’t keep spending what we were. What do you think our ad spend should look like?”
“Do you have examples of how others are addressing their customers in ads?”
“If our company is donating a certain portions of our sales to charities during this pandemic, is it wrong to highlight that in our ads and on our landing page? We don’t want to come off as exploitative.”
These are just some of the quotes I cherry picked from the dozens and dozens of conversations I’ve had these past two weeks with clients and sales prospects looking to start work with Granular. As I reflected on these conversations, a few things I thought about:
Provide Examples from Your Client’s Competitors and the Competition
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what to do in all areas of a business, digital advertising included.
From my conversations, advertisers intuitively know (or feel) that their current ad copy approach with PPC ads might not make sense right now, but they’re not sure. I know for many agencies and consultants it’s a well known complaint when you have a client that says “I’ll know it when I see it”, but to a large degree, that’s a big part an outside marketing consultant/agency/vendor’s value ad.
Being able to provide examples in the marketplace, both direct and indirect competitor and industry examples, along with insights and recommendations, moves the ball forward in the decision making process.
There’s More to PPC Than Pulling Levers and Pushing Buttons
Granular’s clients and network of sales opportunities turn to our team to provide insight and strategy that goes beyond adjusting bids and applying targeting settings.
During uncertain times, I’m reminded of this more than ever as I see my colleagues step up to the plate and absolutely hit it out of the park.It’s because of our team’s ability to empathize, prioritize, strategize and execute in such a disciplined way that I know Granular has that “IT” factor that is hard to quantify, but is easy to recognize when you’re in the midst of it.
Sometimes Doing Nothing is the Right Answer
Let me explain. It’s easy to overthink a solution to a problem that might not really be there. Sometimes the answer is to maintain the status quo until the data tells you otherwise. Other times, there might need to be an adjustment. As an agency, if you can get ahead of things by being proactive, putting yourself in the shoes of your client and providing some insights and recommendations on the front end, you can save SOOO much time on the back end. An hour or two spent in a Gmail draft, a Google Doc and the ad interface can save several hour long meetings and copying tons of people from the agency and client on emails in the future.
