When the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 began and governments locked down businesses, more than half of all businesses said they experienced negative effects from the shutdown. They expected it would take at least six months to recover.

The United States is only three months in and small businesses across the country are shuttering their locations. Larger businesses are hemorrhaging cash just trying to stay alive. But digital marketing is seeing a boom.

Why?

If you want to encourage people to spend during an economic downswing, you need to market to them. And right now, everyone is online.

Here’s how Covid-19 has impacted digital marketing.

1. Organic Traffic Down

Because the virus impacted nearly every sector negatively, organic traffic is down across the board. Travel got hit the worst. Even ecommerce took a hit.

The only industries that saw an upswing were finance, food, healthcare, media, and pharmacy.

2. Conversions Were Also Down

Conversions and organic traffic aren’t always co-dependent. But this time, they seem to be equally affected.

In face, conversions are worse off in some sectors than even organic traffic. If you look at construction, you’ll see that conversions have dropped dismally. Most states halted construction projects during the pandemic and some states even banned hiring independent contractors.

This would destroy any marketing gains construction companies gained over the past year or two.

Again, travel got hit hard, but for some reason, conversions and traffic do not equal in their drop rate. But large travel companies have offered steep discounts for travelers shoring up some of the conversion loss they would have experienced otherwise.

3. Where Do You Focus?

First and foremost, if you’re wanting to boost your conversions and bring in more income, hire experts. You can visit here to get help.

Second, SEO and organic are the highest converting marketing methods out there. Compare 14.6% average conversion rate to the typical one or two percent of most digital marketing methods.

Google is constantly shifting the target. Stay on top of what is effective and what might tank your rankings. The safest way to rank on Google is to create quality content your audience will enjoy and share.

Be sure your content is accurate and error-free. Google penalizes sites for spammy content and poorly-written content.

Social Commerce

If you’re in the eCommerce space, social media is going to be your right-hand man. With the recent addition of eCommerce store fronts in Instagram, you’ll be able to reach larger audiences quickly through hashtags and stories.

Look for social commerce plugins and apps to make your life easier. Automation will make you more effective in your marketing and give you time to interact with your customers and craft better content.

Invest in ads on social media. While organic traffic might be the highest converting, social media ads will get your brand in front of more eye-balls. You never know who might have seen your ad before later searching for you on Google. You can’t measure every marketing effect and you just have to trust that exposure will help your brand succeed.