How to navigate Covid-19 by Facebook

The outbreak has quickly brought changes in consumer behaviour and a huge amount of people have turned to Facebook to stay informed.

All industries have been impacted by COVID-19. As consumers’ awareness for their own safety has heightened, they expect the same with brands on the products and services they offer.

The way brands deal with the crisis now may influence consumers in the future. Brands have got to:

Focus on business continuity in the short-term
People are looking to trusted brands to provide them with safety and security in testing times. They want to be assured that the brands they choose are in control of their supply chains, transparent and trustworthy. Therefore people expect brands to:
- Deliver real value
- Act responsibly
- Do right by the community, including their employees.
Research from Asia has found that brands that were able to deliver purpose in an ethical way saw their value grow twice as much as average brands.
Consumers are seeking proactive communication from brands:
- Be authentic
- Maintain proactive and frequency contact with your customers
- Set realistic expectations for your customers
- Frequently train your customer service teams
- Constantly monitor and act upon customers feedback
Make sure you are doing the following:
- Make sure if you are having a problem with delivery times, put a notice on the website about shipping information
- Email customers who have orders pending
- Anticipate what people want to talk about
- Bring experiences to them on the platform
Capture bounce back in the near-term
Brands should be flexible and fast moving:
- Avoid removing all ads, re-prioritise marketing channels during the outbreak
- Evaluate each campaign in context, showing empathy
Drive structural enhancement in the long-term
Start to build your brand ready for the bounce back. Build remarketing lists and email lists, this is the time to focus on your brand awareness. Plan ‘bounce-back consumer consumption’ campaigns in advance, ready to quickly pick up ad spending post outbreak

70%

Increase in Messenger group video calls

1.6 billion

People log into Facebook every day

Facebook

Is the world’s 3rd most visited website

Let’s take a look at some best practices by verticals:

FMCG
Short term strategy
- Shift budget online – people are inside
- Craft your story around consumer reassurance rather than product messaging
- Keep a leadership mindset:
  Build brand awareness campaigns
  Create poll ads to understand your customer needs
  Host livestream events to engage your audience
Long term
- Keep messaging in a leadership mindset, be consumer need centric
- Continue to drive strategies across different marketing channels
- Plan your future campaigns so you’re ready to up-lift with a clear goal and objectives
eCommerce
Short term
- Stay top of mind:
  Create poll ads to understand consumers preferences
  Host livestream events to stay engaged with consumers
  Create brand awareness campaigns or promote helpful and useful content
- Enhance business results
  Run consideration campaigns for pre-order promotion if not having enough stock
  Consider running conversion campaigns promoting health care or wellbeing products that you may have
  Retarget product buyers with dynamic ads to increase discovery of other products that may also meet consumer needs
Long Term
- Use messenger to stay engaged with consumers
- Keep momentum on brand efforts done during the outbreak, companies that continue to advertise will come out stronger
- Reactivate ‘business as usual’ performance campaigns
- Use the time to analyse your customers to help you prepare and plan your future campaigns
Travel
Short term
Promote your brand image as trusted and responsible travel providers (this was before social distancing was introduced!)
- Brand awareness – do a reach campaign with a message of your brand trustworthiness and reliability, promoting your rigorous measures to ensure travellers safety
- Video campaigns showcasing client appreciation of your responsiveness, safety first standards
- Host live-stream educational workshop on travel safety
- Create poll ads understand travellers preferences of destinations
Mid and Long term
- Continually build image of a reliable provider, build your remarketing and email lists through brand awareness campaigns
- Create conversion campaigns retargeting people who visited your website and viewed holiday offers on your website, instead of selling holidays, inspire them about future bookings
Financial Services
Short term
- Brand
  Provide a reassuring voice to stay top of mind such as a video/story
  Consider partnerships with other services to enhance customer experience at this time i.e Mastercard and deliveroo
- Conversion
  Focus on app engagement strategies and enhancing service through online channels
  Create retarget based intent campaigns – i.e insurance
Mid long term
- Consider lead generation campaigns to build new customer bases
- Showcase the power of collaboration across different marketing channels

To summarise, plan these three steps, we are currently in the short-term, moving into the mid-term:

IMMEDIATE COMMUNICATION

Focus on business continuity and maintain communication with customers so they feel secure and safe.

SHORT TERM

Adapt communication messaging, re-adjust marketing strategy and ensure sufficient marketing investment, avoid stopping all ads, change you advertising message to reassure your customers.

MID TO LONGER TERM

Build brand awareness campaigns, start preparing for the business rebound. Use the time to analyse trends and your customers to help plan and prepare campaigns ready for the uplift.