After dozens of conversations with my clients, teams, and business partners, I wanted to share some of my perspective. This is changing day by day, but I wanted to get some thoughts out in the public eye to hopefully drive discussion.

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These are uncertain (and scary) times we are living in.

The world events we are currently dealing with as citizens of a global society are unprecedented. Thousands of people are dying, and experts are still warning we have not yet reached the peak of infection of COVID-19.

Businesses around the world are losing revenue, being forced to make painful layoffs, and governments at every level of being forced to step in and design vehicles for relief.

As a Digital Marketer

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I understand why the very first channel being pulled back is paid media.

With so much uncertainty, most products and services have become non-essential, and if your consumer audience isn’t buying, it’s wasteful to spend precious business revenue on customer acquisition.

You’ve likely already received dozens, if not hundreds, of emails about Coronavirus from companies you probably didn’t even realize had your email address in the first place.

Email is a channel that’s low enough cost that in almost every industry it’s been the first channel marketing teams are leveraging to try to pull traffic back to company websites.

Aside from trying to navigate all of the information that seems to be spewing out of every media publication by the minute, businesses (especially small businesses) are being forced to put energy into:

• Supporting a remote work force (for many, for the very first time)
• Customer service
• Reputation management

What This Means for Organic Search

However, with all of this doom and gloom, the companies that do make it through this pandemic, will come out much, much stronger.

Many of us as business owners are being forced into a position of championing resilience, agility, and even creative ways to create (and sustain) revenue.

While some industries are being hit substantially harder than others, like retail, travel, real estate, and logistics, others are seeing record growth.

I personally believe that companies that continue to execute on their planned digital marketing campaigns, and more specifically, on their planned content and conversion strategies around SEO as an acquisition channel, will be poised for faster (and more effective) recovery when we come out the other side.

I realize that even reading those words may be a tough pill to swallow, but if we look at large-scale outbreaks throughout history, there are signs of growth and recovery;

• After SARS crushed China (and it’s economy) retail sales and industrial production slowed for a few months, but export expansion remained steady throughout the year.
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• The outbreak of Measles led to record pharmaceutical production and a wide range of breakthroughs in pharmaceutical treatments and vaccines.
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• Similarly, once a vaccine was developed for Ebola, the sales generated from this new market segment drove record economic growth in regions where it was sold and distributed.
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Be Cautious, Be Safe, But Don’t Panic

I hope this doesn’t come off as tone-deaf, because I understand the scale and magnitude of this infection. I’m absolutely scared for small business owners, the economy, and especially society.

I’m not here to tout optimism and downplay the current global state of challenge and difficulty. More so, I want to have a conversation about the very nature of SEO.

What you shouldn’t do as a business

Or as marketer is look for a way to leverage coronavirus for marketing strategy.

What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t halt all marketing operations, specifically investments in channels that tend to create the largest exponential ROI, like SEO.

In short, don’t just focus on the short-term.

What you should be doing

Instead, consider some of the following ideas as ways to continue to execute in the wake of this global crisis:

1. Communicate to your customers any changes you’re making, and closely manage your public communications.
2. Comfort employees and team members, be flexible, and if you’re in a position to maintain your full team – let them know.
3. Support team members (and employees) who want to invest in their professional development. This could be executing on a content strategy, learning to code, or even trying their hand at designing landing pages.
4. Outsource more work to freelancers to lower costs, improve your teams ability and effectiveness with delegation, and more than anything to support freelance workers who are being hit hard right now.

Overall the more you invest in your marketing infrastructure, and long-term ROI generating channels, the better poised you will be to come out of this a better, stronger company.

What do you think?

What are you doing? What actions are you taking (or stopping) to help support your business, your employees, your team members and colleagues?

Please take a moment and help start the conversation by sharing in the comments. Let’s learn together.