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Due to the current situation, many businesses are unsettled. As SEO and PPC experts, we ask ourselves: What does this mean for our clients and their campaigns?
As we all know, the current Соrоnаvіrus event is affecting many different businesses and the services they provide. This unexpected and sudden series of events has caused many fluctuations in the stock market and overall economy due to uncertainty. Because of this, many of us are currently experiencing a disruption in the flow of our daily business life due to fear of the unexpected and not knowing what will happen next.
But even during low seasons or other unexpected events, we never pause campaigns. Here is why:
The SEO Perspective
From an SEO perspective, it’s very clear: the Google search engine is unaffected by the Соrоnаvіrus, and the algorithms continue to run as if nothing has happened. If you pause your SEO campaign now, your website will start declining. Because the success of any SEO campaign depends on regular measures and updates. If you paused your campaign now, you would hand out your rankings and traffic to your competition that continues with their SEO efforts. Resuming SEO campaigns after they have beContinue en paused will not bring your rankings back to where they were before. By then the game will have changed, with rankings and visibility restructured by Google. It’s almost like we have to start from scratch.
The PPC Perspective
“Even though pausing and resuming a campaign, adgroup, keyword, or ad won’t affect quality score or historical data, it will almost certainly affect performance. Unfortunately, a successful PPC campaign doesn’t have an ON/OFF switch; it’s more like landing and taking off a helicopter. No matter how well you land (pause your PPC), once the rotors stop spinning you can’t expect to jump in and instantly be in the air. And the wrong kind of landing can mean never taking off again. […] This performance decline happens because the rest of the world probably didn’t shut down their PPC.” (Red Racer, 2016)
Keep in mind: The good thing about PPC is that Google only charges per click. If the event leads to less interest from your target audience, less budget will be spent.
When it comes to PPC campaigns, opportunities can be neglected should the ad campaign be paused. Therefore, we do not recommend to pause campaigns out of panic.
The most important lesson from the past is that less traffic during low season often comes with what we call a ‘conversion delay’. That means, target audiences see your ad, don’t act right away, but convert at a later time.
Don’t Panic: Stay on Course
When unexpected things happen, we have to remember what business role models always tell us: “The winners have always been those who stayed on course and were not put off by temporary trends.” An old wisdom that we sometimes forget.
That’s why business psychologists always warn us that emotions are reflexes, and that’s why they appear first, before rational thinking gets its turn.
If you have any questions about how your statistics look at the moment, and how we adjust your current campaign during holiday seasons and this particularly unexpected season, please ask your project manager. We are here to help.
Stay healthy,
Your blue media team
References:
- Red Racer (2016): blog.redraceradv.com/4-things-to-consider-before-pausing-your-ppc/
