I tried not to post this, but I feel that I have to.
Panic, according to coronavirus (COVID-19) and the current international economic situation, will lead to changes. I’m not a prominent economist neither virologist.
But something I understand and as I see the possibilities. In the situation with panic levels increase and more attempts used to stop spread the virus are implemented: cancelation of significant events, quarantines, etc. will lead to a new wave of people to adopt eCommerce and delivery services.
Yesterday I was at the shopping mall and had no problem parking a car near the entrance while usually on the same weekday and time I have to park 100 meters away, and this is the city, where no one has this virus.
But people still need goods, and they still have money, so where will they go in a while? And how will they differ from those who are already there?
As an analyst, I want to verify the hypothesis and only after that make decisions, but at the moment when everything could be confirmed, those who took risks will be a king others will loose.
So what are my hypotheses?
- We will see the growth in eCommerce with delivery.
- This new wave of customers would differ from current customers:
- They will prefer their usual way of communication: telephone, messengers.
- They will use dramatically different queries in search engines.
- They will act on the website in another way.
- Brands will have to move advertising budgets from offline needs to reattract customers from offline to online.
- The previous point will lead to an increase in the competition, so the bids will grow as required budgets.
What a business can do to win in that situation?
- Your customers are the best way to grow! Work more with current customers:
- Useful personalized emails still work. Create even more precise, accurate email and get profit.
- Little manipulation works focus on the relief of customers’ pain but be creative. They are full of fears. Don’t make them hate you.
- Your customers should attract new customers. Nothing new, but in the case of CAC (customer acquisition cost) growth, this is an excellent way to attract new customers.
- Be proactive. As we expect a wave of new customers that are uncommon with eCommerce and came here in need, we have to make their experience comfortable. The idea is that if they still preferred offline, they need to communicate and like the attention they get in offline. Try to implement:
- Online chat with proactive messages engaging communication.
- Callback widget services with activity tracking inviting to leave a phone number and get a call in seconds.
- Track the activity of already known users and follow up them with a strictly personalized email or even phone call from a representative with an offer that the user was interested in.
- Remarketing campaigns for those new customers also looks like magic.
- Finally, implement CRM and business flows according to it.
- Start experimenting even more with online ads. Expecting new way of customers that will act differently, you should try to experiment with creatives, keywords, approaches. Some hypotheses that didn’t work previously can bring great results now.
- Choose hypotheses ➡ Test them ➡ Measure results ➡ Scale that works ➡ Validate ➡ Scale more.
- Measure all types of conversions. Expect growth in phone calls, messengers, online chats. Conversions made by such channels will differ from those that occur online. Different keywords, different intents, creatives, average check, time to finish the conversion, everything.
- Implement end-to-end analytics to start tracking revenue (better profits) that occurred by each exact ad and make improvements on each stage.
- Implement modern business telephony that will not only help to answer the call but much more:
- Provide call recording for future analysis to make business flow improvements, collect feedback, and use it in marketing and other business needs.
- Know better your customers get insights on a caller from CRM and analytics system in real-time to provide better service presuming customer needs.
- Transfer callers to highly specialized representatives.
- Implement instruments that help to work with messaging apps in a pro way.
Never give up!
Crysis is a vast possibility to grow for those who deal with it!