M+ 101: Marketing During a Global Pandemic

In this time of vast uncertainty, one thing has remained certain and that’s social media. Of course, social media has become a huge part of our lives for the last 15 or more years keeping us in the know and connected to what we are most interested in. And that is basically what the majority of us are clinging to right now, right? Connection. Until we can go out to see our friends and families again, we are relying so heavily on social media technology to keep a sense of companionship normalcy. Now, there seems to be nothing but time on our hands and social media is there for us more than ever before. Zoom and Facetime have become our best friends, Twitter and Facebook are our daily news outlets and Instagram keeps us up to date with our friend’s stay-at-home activities…

Though our Marketing Plus office has been closed, our Zoom office has been open and thriving every morning as we continue to address what we can be doing better for our clients during this unexpected time. Over this past month and a half, we are seeing across our various clients and various platforms a spike in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter engagements which prompted us to do some research:

Here are some social media and social messaging stats for you thanks to The New York Times:

Websites usage as of February 29 to present:

Facebook.com: +27%

Netflix.com: +16%

YouTube.com: +15.3%

App usage as of February 29:

TikTok: +15.4%

Zoom usage as of February 29 went from 2 million users to over 6 million and climbing as a result of the pandemic and in a recent study about the impacts of COVID-19 on digital marketing by Neil Patel, online traffic for media is up 32%.

Sources: NY Times, Neil Patel

As Team Orange, our goal is to always be on top of our social media game. What better time to increase online posting than the present when social media usage has sky rocketed? In fact, according to Amber Gray of Produce for Kids, “Social media and messaging service usage has increased by 44 percent globally as many are seeking more ways to connect.” This was the time to really make our social media presence known for our clients various accounts. Obviously, we realized that the more people that are online will in turn result in more views for our posts/promotions. We adjusted our strategy accordingly and were pleasantly surprised to see an increase in sales from one of our fast food client’s Easter promotion. Compared to the 2019 promotion, their sales jumped 29.02% which was music to our ears because social media marketing was the only avenue we used to advertise this Easter promotion. Not only that, but for the entire month of April, our client saw an overall 9% increase in sales compared to last year from their Fresno, Clovis and Hanford franchise locations thanks to our increased social media presence. This was and will always be such a rewarding time for us. Not only did we drive more traffic to our client’s restaurants, we also proved to ourselves that even though we are all treading through some rough water right now, we can still do what we do best: Marketing. I mean, any sort of increase in sales during a global pandemic we would consider to be a huge accomplishment.

In light of our global situation, we are still here doing what we do best everyday: putting the plus sign in Marketing Plus. We may not be together in the office but we are together in spirit, doing everything we can to be the marketing superstars our clients deserve. Afterall, we are all in this together. 

By: Kindle Cowger, Junior Accounts Coordinator