It’s safe to say we’ve had a pretty bizarre year so far…and ‘bizarre’ can be switched for any number of descriptors! Shopping behaviours and habits have changed, as people have flocked online to buy everything and anything that they can’t get in the shops or what they’ve needed to make lockdown as bearable as possible.
Info, products and services have been accessed during Covid-19 using search, so marketers have a whole wealth of search data to try and gage the changes in behaviours over the last few months. As a consequence of the uncertainty, marketing budgets for lots of companies have been impacted, but that doesn’t mean that marketers can’t be savvy with search data and prepare for latter part of this year.
Seasonal Shifts
There’re normally seasonal trends that marketers can rely on every year, but because lots of areas have been affected by Covid-19, such as being able to go on holiday and all of the knock-on purchases that would be made for that. What’s interesting to keep an eye on now is the re-opening and re-starting of some types of seasonal activities and trends and the purchasing of items later on in response to this. People might have bought certain items outside of the usual trend times too.
Search marketers should probably expect to see pent-up demand and exaggerated seasonable demands at other times, such as more travel, disposable income saved up, relaxing of home working etc.
Local Search
Home working could have a massive impact on local search results and data. People that usually commute and head into different areas could be looking for new options for lunch and shopping closer to home. Businesses in cities are suffering because of the loss of office workers, as people are opting to spend and visit areas in their local vicinity while they home work.
Making sure that local SEO for a business is up-to-scratch and crucially gives people correct info and guidelines around Covid-19 restrictions is really recommended. Google My Business has good resources for publishing info and keeping customers up to date. Trying to look for new opportunities and work out how patterns have changed is key to local search right now.
Tools and Resources
There are so many tools and resources for search marketers to use right now and keep on top of trends and insights. SEO auditing tools and keyword research software can help to guide marketing strategy. What’s crucial is being able to understand, assess and react to consumer behaviour – most particularly in as close to real-time as possible.
Google Trends and Rising Retail Categories have been released to help marketers during coronavirus and there are plenty of other good, cheap tools to use and help navigate such a constantly fluctuating time.
Everything is so unpredictable at the moment and trends are all over the shop – trying to understand what’s going on can feel like a mammoth task, but trying to gather as much information as possible and monitoring search data related to your business as closely as you can will help to give some clarity and direction.
For search marketing help or any advice, contact our team at DOWO today.