Most industries took a major hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the digital marketing industry too could not escape its effects. When big businesses took a hit due to massive fluctuations in the market, they looked to cut their expenses and run the show keeping expenses minimal. In most industries, marketing and advertising are considered as a luxury and not a necessity. Thus, the major budget allocations for marketing expenses were cut down and survival expenses were concentrated on.
Table of Contents
Project Inflow During the Pandemic
As we are a digital marketing agency in Mangalore, we have been seeing the ups and downs when it comes to clients’ approaches and the effectiveness of the Ads we run. When the pandemic just began in India, it was announced that there will be a lockdown for a week. Later, it was extended for several weeks.
For the first 15 days, all clients were in what we could call the “waiting mode”. Just trying to understand how long it would take to go back to normal — and then they slowly started adopting what we could call a “survival mode” of business operation. When the situation continued for more than 15 days, most small scale industries, small businesses and mid-range players were instructed to stop all marketing activities till further notice. This greatly impacted revenue figures for us. After another three months, with hopes of a vaccine and the decrease in the number of cases — most businesses and the economy started slowly picking up. Around September, the business graph began going up and come December, it was almost back to normal.
Changes in Digital Marketing Results
For a small number of clients who had high hopes and expectations, the journey began with cutting down more than 50% of service fees for them. The strategy changed to fit minimal costs and maximum gains, along with highly optimised campaigns. The cost of advertising has been reduced to almost 50% from the pre-pandemic days. In the auction insights, we do see fewer clients running ads. At the same time, there are issues with conversion and reasonable closing to show sustainable value. The main revenue source of advertisement for Tier-2 cities like Mangalore is via education, hospital and tourism industries which have been going through a lot of uncertainty. Even the end consumers are not sure about making buying decisions at that moment. Still, we continued on our journey and brought about note-worthy results. Metrics have hit the record level of optimisation.
What did businesses gain by marketing during the pandemic?
Even though many businesses had incurred losses and were functioning with a lot of uncertainty, some mid-range businesses with slightly deeper pockets took advantage of the situation.
- As we mentioned earlier, advertising costs were almost 50% lower than pre-pandemic days. So, businesses could gain extra mileage by spending less. They could also gain a better bargain in terms of service fees.
- As competition had fallen, marketing platforms were not stuffed with too many materials and ads.
- Many businesses used the little extra money they had to create brand awareness and leave a lasting impression on customers’ minds — which will yield results in the long run.
What changed in the advertising industry?
We strongly believe that the end users/consumers have changed their mode of engagement from hoardings and newspapers to digital platforms. The traditional media like Television, Newspapers and Hoardings require heavy one-time investments. Businesses are looking for cost effective, easy to start, and ROI-centric solutions to spend their marketing budgets. At the same time, users have also turned their interests towards digital marketing.
The industry is moving towards an exponential growth in demand for digital marketing. Especially with the Tier 2 cities, the marketing expenses have been moved to the digital space. As a large population of consumers are active on digital platforms, the effectiveness of digital marketing via various platforms has been increasing in this pandemic duration.
Now that you know what has been the journey, the effects and the current situation, you will have to make the choice of finding the right media for your business’ marketing. We at Alter Marketing Solutions, a digital marketing company in Mangalore, can consult you for digital marketing and take the responsibility as an extension of your marketing team. We handle end-to-end digital marketing solutions without any hassles. Contact [email protected] or call us at +91 99864 60086.