Just a couple of moths ago we couldn't even imagine that being in apocalypse and saving the planet would lead us to... buy more bread machines. When humanity changes their habits and behavior so rapidly, businesses have to adapt and search for new possibilities.
In the midst of pandemic people prefer baking bread and then get fit with home sports equipment. Besides e-Commerce there are significant changes in other spheres: events (even techno-parties and court sessions) are massively turning into live streams. Videogames and online versions of table top games are growing in sales, pharmacies are going to online market, and all of those who couldn't manage gathering their own audience are massively going to marketplaces, which are actively growing as well, developing their logistics and buying more parcel terminals.
SimilarWeb report on activities in different spheres from December 2019 to April 2020: a significant growth in telemedicine, videogames and food delivery. Growing demand of home sports activities has led to launching video lessons on Marketplaces.
People started videocalling their friends and relatives more often (20% growth) and send more messages (15% growth). Videos, livestreams, stories and newsfeed views have grown up by 10-16%. Pandemic has led more audience from offline to online, during this period marketing managers and developers are trying their best to get people attached to their products, and the services that are effectively working online will hardly want to go back offline.
Which spheres are more likely to grow and successfully move forward:
Food
Fresh meal delivery, cooking and baking ingredients delivery.
Entertainment
Game industry, online cooking classes, virtual travelling.
Office rental is pretty expensive, and flexible working hours are becoming new reality for many companies. That gives new possibilities for spheres like remote work systems and cloud based services.
At the slightest signs of instability businesses cut their marketing expenses. Affiliate programs in betting sphere have decreased commissions from 50% to 10%, and some of financial affiliate programs have decreased their commissions by 20-30%.
Amazon's affiliate program have announced decreasing rates for some categories starting from April, 21, 2020. At the same time the company has significantly decreased their paid search advertising budget, which had eBay instantly use this situation and take bigger paid search part.
The New Normal: COVID-19’s Business and Consumer Impact in Europe [April 2020] However, there are few companies that can afford increasing advertising budget like eBay, so we can observe significant media advertising and brand promotion decrease. Comparing to media and paid search advertising, affiliate marketing is doing pretty well, which totally makes sense, because advertisers realize that during this insecure period it's better to pay for a customer who already made a purchase, then paying in advance, avoiding risks of loosing money and focusing more on the product and logistics.
For those advertisers who can only afford promotion within specific advertising limit, CPA channels will be a great solution to have a quick start and linear traffic growth.
We better change fast then die slow, so it's just a kind reminder to check when was the last time you've built your customer journey map and see if it still works in this new reality. If not - take action. Now.
