Key insights: COVID-19 continues to impact consumer behavior, marketing spend and the marketing mix

Understandably there is a lot of info out there right now talking about the effect COVID-19 has had on various sectors and businesses and how you should be dealing with it.

Rather than adding to the clutter in your inbox with our own findings we have decided to help and compile all the data out there making the rounds. So here you go:

Retail

According to Amperity COVID-19 Retail Monitor, who tracked consumer behavior across categories and channels from 100 North American retail brands, overall retail demand is down 90%. The losses are mainly driven by closure of retail stores, however online revenue is also down 74%. 

It isn’t all doom and gloom though as the Health & (Read more...) has shown consistent growth of 19.28%. There has been a considerable shift towards higher-priced products in health and beauty, which has led to the sector’s strong performance.

Food & Beverage declined by 20.38% after panic-buying slowed down. 

Social sees 2-day improvement, overtaking email as the most resilient non-organic marketing channel.

Ad spend

According to a forecast from eMarketer, global worldwide ad spend is currently down $20B from the beginning of the year.

However, rather than stopping ad spend, marketers need to refocus ad spend on key areas of streaming, gaming or online food delivery.

eMarketer’s data shows the best use of ad spend at the moment is PPC, followed by email marketing and regional advertising.

Global streaming during COVID-19

Not surprisingly, a new report from streaming media intelligence provider Conviva – finds that streaming during the pandemic has climbed sharply (26%) in the U.S.

The increase in daytime viewing more clearly reflects the boost in stay-at-home behavior: the 10AM to 5PM window increased 39 percent between March 9 and 23.

Early morning hours are also up 26 percent, and pre-primetime fringe rose 20 percent. Interestingly, the only drop – a negligible 2 percent down – was in primetime.

For streaming video providers and advertisers, a key question is whether these bumps will carry over in any degree once the pandemic subsides.

“We anticipate streaming providers will retain new viewers long after the coronavirus has ended,” Conviva CEO Bill Demas said in a statement, “as viewers embrace the variety and flexibility of the medium.”

From the Conviva report

Messaging strategy during COVID-19

Messaging strategy remains important. As per research American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As):

• 43% of consumers find it reassuring to hear from brands they “know and trust” as COVID-19 pandemic spreads.
• 40% want to know how companies are responding to the coronavirus pandemic
• 15% say they don’t want to hear from companies at the current time
• 43% of consumers believe coronavirus messages from retailers sound too similar and “are losing their impact.”

Companies especially need to be cautious about communicating with inactive customers and customers they have not communicated with recently.

Potential mediums to communicate with stakeholders (in addition to email) are Social media, online video and podcasts.

Global Web Index found that – while almost 45% of global consumers are devoting more time to social media – over 10% are also creating and uploading videos themselves.

Brands can help people as they turn their homes into offices, schools, gyms, restaurants, leisure and entertainment spaces to learn, laugh and live in.

Brands can amplify the ‘stay at home’ message, in a correct and creative way. – esp. in places like the UK and US where there are lots of restrictions.

It is important to have a human-first rather than consumer-led approach in your messaging.

How COVID-19 will impact B2B tech spending?

According to new research by TrustRadius, many companies in the tech industry are bracing themselves for a broader economic decline. 18% anticipate that their companies will be spending less on software—a surprisingly low figure given the disruption to personal and professional lives that coronavirus has caused already.  

The fact that 66% of respondents expect unchanged or increased spending is more positive than many in the tech industry would expect. (This could of course change as the economic impact of the pandemic is better understood.) 

40% of organizations potentially spending more on software can also be an opportunity for ideally placed vendors to solidify themselves within the longer-term business trends caused by the immediate crisis.

Speaking to the Executive Director in Corporate Technology of an American multinational cosmetics company, we found that remote working is making them finetune their tech communication on the internal and external front.

The entire notion of having a 360 degree view of the consumer is front of mind for them and current tech projects are in play to look at the best ways to capture this. They are currently investing in consulting tech and paid media.

What are people reading on ClickZ?

Obviously COVID-19 remains the most sought after topic right now. We have noticed that any of our articles that tackle the topic of coronavirus tend to have over 400% more engagement. People are keen on getting insights on COVID-19 and its impact on various sectors, businesses, verticals.

Our readers are also interested in content that can help them optimize performance and conversions. Another topic which our readers seem to love at the moment is the death of the third-party cookies and how business will survive after it is phased out. 

As of this month, Google has implemented a new secure-by-default model for cookies, enabled by a new cookie classification system.

This system will stop sending third-party cookies in cross-site requests unless the cookies are secure and flagged through SameSite, which is meant to prevent the browser from sending the cookie along with cross-site requests.

While SameSite is not a particularly new concept, this will be the first time a secure cookie flag will be a requirement for those using Chrome — not just a best practice, as it has been up until now.

Google implemented these new requirements with Chrome 80 on February 4 as the first step in a larger multi-year plan to phase out support for third-party cookies, leaving the ad tech and martech industry with just a few weeks left to make the necessary tweaks to ensure their cookies continue to function properly.