Coronavirus Demand Spells Future Opportunity

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic is continuing to grow, with the U.S. passing both China and Italy in confirmed cases (that have been reported).

The economic impact of forcing “non-essential” businesses to shut down has been enormous. Many aesthetic practices have closed their doors and are doing their best to not lay off their staff. These are indeed trying times. However, there is room for optimism among this chaos.

Optimism starts with citizens following orders to social distance, and if that works to effectively curb the spread of COVID-19 then we will see businesses in certain metros start to open in April and May. That may be wishful thinking, but as a business owner, you need to prepare to jump back into sales and marketing with a full head of steam once you’re able to re-open.

Businesses that sit on the sidelines and tepidly get back into their sales and marketing will suffer tremendously in the coming months. A Bain study concluded that companies that struggled post-recession had often “switched to survival mode, making deep cuts and reacting defensively.”

A cost-cutting mentality gives your aesthetic practice the lowest probability of capturing market share and beating your competition when times get better, and they will.

Further Room for Optimism Within the Aesthetic Market: Consumer Demand

There are many ways to measure consumer demand, but we’ll start with the most obvious one for digital marketers: search volume. I noted in an article published earlier this week that search demand for aesthetic terms has stayed strong, staying flat for some terms and only dipping slightly for other terms.

The Opportunity with Google Ads

The average cost-per-click (CPC) has dropped 47% in the past 7 days, compared to the same time period one year ago. That’s a crazy jump, but one that’s not too surprising. This tells us that fewer aesthetic practices are advertising, which makes sense if you’re closed.

However, if you have a few of the key pieces in place right now, it may be worth considering continuing at least some of your ad campaigns, even if you’re closed. Those pieces are:

• Automated lead follow-up processes
• A salesperson to follow up with leads and book…
• Virtual consultations: more on which software to use to run these in this article

Demand for many aesthetic procedures, based on search volume, has only slightly wavered while the average CPC for Google Ads has dropped significantly. The hope is that as Americans go back to work and have money in their pockets that that demand will continue to rise but that the average CPC will stay lower.

Why this expectation? As mentioned above, many aesthetic practices will be gun-shy about investing any money into marketing as they re-open. This mentality makes sense as business owners are scared and bleeding money.

However, if this happens you likely will not see the average CPC with Google Ads jump back up to “normal” levels immediately, even as search demand rises, because there’s less competition bidding for keywords. This a huge opportunity for your practice when you re-open.

If you get back in the game early, right when you re-open and before the average CPC goes back up, then you are essentially “buying low” as they say in the stock market world. You couple that with a demand that hasn’t dropped much, for many aesthetic queries, and is expected to rise as more Americans have cash in their pockets, and you have a business opportunity.

In the Meantime, Your Practice Needs to Stay Afloat

While your aesthetic practice is closed, you may be in survival mode, but please make sure you do not neglect your sales and marketing. This means:

• Focus on ideas to generate revenue while you’re closed
• Maximize email, text, and social communication to stay in front of patients and prospects
• Pause your ads, unless you have someone you can pay to follow up with leads and schedule virtual consultations
• Do not neglect SEO, it’s your long play
• Be sensitive to marketing during this time: do not run “Coronavirus promos” or other crass or naive campaigns

Content from Turbo. Written by Tom Sullivan.

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