Napier's webinar describes the best marketing strategies to adopt to protect your brand.

1. STRATEGIES FOR MARKETING IN THE
COVID-19 CRISIS WEBINAR
April 2020

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“This is our first pandemic,
we have no idea.”
Matt Van Wagner, president of Find Me Faster, on a
SearchEngineLand.com B2B round table
https://searchengineland.com/8-takeaways-b2b-advertisers-in-time-of-covid-19-332142

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Webinar Goal
This webinar will provide an overview of what
other B2B technology marketers are doing to help
you make better decisions

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Agenda
• The different strategies you can apply in the current crisis
• How best to re-allocate existing budget
• What other companies are doing
• The five things you should do now to protect your brand

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Previous Recessions
• Cutting marketing has a short-term benefit
• But a severe long-term impact
Sources – Data2Decisions & Butterfield, cited in BBH presentation
https://www.slideshare.net/HarryGuild/covid19-and-marketing-a-briefing-to-marketing-leaders

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Other Industries (feedback from other agencies)
• Depends on industry, tactic and company
• Industry
– Travel, entertainment and hospitality closed
– BBQs, home entertainment, pharmaceuticals,
ecommerce benefit
• Tactic
– Advertising (particularly PPC) down
– Digital (e.g. Alexa, websites) up
• Companies have own “best approach”

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US PPC Conversion Rates Drop by 21%

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PPC Spend – B2B
Source – WordStream -
https://www.wordstream.com/bl
og/ws/2020/03/18/covid-19-
google-ads-data

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B2B Trade Publications
“… we haven’t had any decent amount of advertisement booking over
the last 2 weeks and we already had a couple of cancellations. We are
fighting hard to survive and I really hope only a few companies will be so
short sighted to cut down their marketing budget completely.”
- Anonymous B2B Journalist

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Our Research
• Conducted 20th to 26th April
• Online survey
• 43 companies
• Mix of clients and non-clients
• Sample sourced from clients, top
companies list and through social

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Survey Demographics
Components
32%
Software/
SaaS
19%
Systems/
Subsystems
28%
Other
21%
Components Software/ SaaS Systems/ Subsystems Other
57% Napier Clients
Small (less than 50 people or £10M turnover) 26%
Medium (less than 250 people or £50M turnover) 21%
Large (more than 250 people or £50M turnover) 9%
Enterprise (more than 1000 people or £250M turnover) 44%

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Business Cost-Cutting
• Layoffs: 7%
• Furlough: 20%
• Reduced hours: 9%
• Reduced pay: 9%
• No staffing cost reductions: 56%
All layoffs impacted the marketing team
Only about ½ of the companies
furloughing included marketing

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Impact on Committed Budget
• 2/3 haven’t cut activities
where budget already
committed
• 13% increased budget

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Impact on Marketing Projects
• Around 1/3 cut projects
• 22% cancelled all non-committed
marketing spend
• 59% unchanged or increased
– Slightly lower than committed
budget

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Companies are Retaining Trade Show Budget
• Trade show budget easiest
way to cut marketing spend
• Small % lost all trade show
budget
• Shows not returning money
– Skews data
– Have to exhibit when show
next held

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No Clear Replacement for Shows
• Online content to replace
show most popular
• Companies that have
decided implementing a mix
of activities
• 1/3 not decided strategy for
show budget

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Lack of Early Planning
Only 27% have re-visited their marketing plan or
submitted a new budget because of COVID-19
• Change in environment means planning is essential, even if
budget unchanged

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Marketers Plan to Spend Less Money On
1. Print advertising
2. PPC advertising
3. PR/media relations
4. Digital display advertising (banners)
5. ABM

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Marketers Plan to Spend More Money On…
1. Digital content for company’s website
2. Organic social media
3. Marketing automation
4. Written content
5. Digital content for 3rd party sites
6. Lead generation
7. Visual Content
8. Paid Social Media

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Webinars
The favourite lockdown marketing tactic of them all!

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Budgets for 2HCY20 Under Threat
• Most respondents expected budgets
to be flat or up in 2H of year
• 22% expect cuts of more than ¼
• 18% expect an increase

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How Should We Respond?
• Resolve
– Address immediate challenges
• Resilience
– Address near-term cash, etc. Get through lockdown
• Return
– Get business back to scale quickly
• Reimagination
– Determine the next normal
• Reform
– How will competition and regulation change?
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-
insights/covid-19-implications-for-business

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1. Don’t Wait
“If you fail to plan you are planning to fail”- Benjamin Franklin

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2. Find the Opportunity
“We do believe that our target demographic who is typically in a lab is
now at home and doing more research so we want to be able to engage
with them while they are in what we call a heads up mode.”

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3. Consider the Brand
“What do you think about a recession?”
“I thought about it and decided not to participate.”
- Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart

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4. Show RoI
“If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.” – Peter Drucker
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t approve it”

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5. It’s a Digital World Now!
“Where self-isolation policies are at their peak in Europe, the spike in
internet traffic has reached as high as 70%” - Alfonso Marone, KPMG

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Thank You!
For more information:
www.NapierB2B.com/covid
www.Armitage-Comms.co.uk/covid