What you need to know:

• Paid search is set to become the new "digital storefront" as physical locations close
• Some e-commerce clients are seeing early revenue growth of 17% using paid search strategies
• Luxury retail, professional services and education are among those seeing spikes
• However, specialist agencies claim only some are seeing the value 
• Paid search will become a more prominent part of a brands' marketing mix for the next 3-6 months as online platform use continues to grow

Paid search the 'frontline' for e-commerce

With the ad market already in the midst of one of the worst financial situations since the GFC, "doom and gloom" about its future has already begun to sink in.

However, according to digital agency NorthSouth Advertising Co-Founders James Gilchrist and James Shaw, there are still revenue opportunities for brands equipped to lean on paid search and other digital marketing strategies.

According to the former Atomic 212 duo, clients in the luxury e-commerce space are up significantly week-on-week.

While acknowledging the recent AfterPay day promotion would have boosted these figures, for one luxury retail client, they are reporting revenue growing at 17% for the second half of March when compared to the first two weeks.

Sessions have also increased by 22% for the same brand, while another e-commerce client has reported a 32% lift in users to site, 12.5% lift in online conversion rate and 60% increase in e-commerce revenue.

Gilchrist says while it’s tempting to say there is widespread doom and gloom across the industry, there will be some that will find themselves "on the up" as more people are at home, increasingly using online platforms.

He says this will be seen heavily throughout the e-commerce sector and not limited to just essential purchases.

"Those clients that were setup in terms of return on ad spend reporting and had a real understanding of where their revenue was coming from are less in the dark in this stage," Gilchrist says. "What you'll see now more than ever is clients ‘sharpening the blade’ of acquisition media as a result, and paid search is the mainstay of that."

"You know where the dollars are coming from, where people are turning off and on and purchasing and not purchasing in your channel mix. Those other clients who maybe didn’t invest in their understanding of first-party and revenue data, are a little more nervous and pulling levers they don’t need to at this point."

Shaw says the recent crisis does highlight the value of understanding your data and knowing exactly where every dollar is coming from.

He says due to the current panic in market, brands have opted to wind down spend or pull campaigns in certain areas based on snap judgments, which haven’t been backed up by the numbers.

"However, I wouldn’t say people are overtly rushing into paid search at this stage and are still being extremely sensitive as to not look to be profiting from what is essentially a global disaster," he says. "But clients, of course, have already recognised that it is an area of their marketing mix that can still drive profit."

Advantage. Search. Or is it?

For Indago Digital MD Gary Nissim, search marketing is full of "conflicting data" at the moment.

"We are seeing increases in search volumes for some of the strangest categories," Nissim says. "Obviously we’re seeing increases in search volume for professional services such as insolvency and separately online training and education."

"But bizarrely we are also seeing increases in search volumes for areas such as energy providers and home security."

Nissim says at this stage clients and their competitors are rarely taking advantage of this increase in search volume and investment is static.

He says there are three core reasons for this:

1. Often the increase is in research and not conversion keywords
2. Consumers and businesses are reticent to enter new relationships and conversion rates are therefore lower
3. Many clients are concerned about the future and are understandably being conservative.

Government influence

Nissim says a lot of change in client spend is currently driven by policy updates coming from government.

For example, clients of his that supply short-term personal loans were increasing spends during the early stages of the COVID crisis but with the government providing one off $750 stimulus payments their spend dropped as less people required their services.

"Also in the finance space we have clients that provide business loans to SME’s," Nissim says. "Spend was increasing but as the government agreed to guarantee 50% of an SME’s business loan to ‘eligible’ institutions their business is not looking as buoyant unless they are approved as an ‘eligible’ institution.

SEO slump

In non-paid media services such as SEO Indago is seeing little movement as it has become a long-term play and the industry remains uncertain as to how long the current crisis will continue.

Nissim says clients are not increasing or reducing budget but are increasing the resource they are able to invest into SEO.

"Typically they have employees who were managing other media and have available hours to help. We are working with these clients to train and subsequently utilise these employees to increase the value in their SEO investment," Nissim says.

"For an employee perspective it keeps them engaged, diversifies their skill set and I hope increases their job security.

Channels set for a shake-up

Paid, SEO and programmatic are not alone in the shake-up to the modern marketing mix.

CX Lavender Founder Will Lavender says clients - especially utility brands, such as energy suppliers and the like - are keeping his agency busy as they begin designing ways to help their customers.

"There is a huge focus on service channels and in particular, making digital channels easily accessible for vulnerable and older customers who are used to face to face—and helping people to work from home efficiently," Lavender says.

"There's now a need for real agility and rapid response - get it up and then refine it after that. It's hard to see the long-term impact as there’s a big focus on immediate needs. The importance of digital experiences will only grow but the impact of overall economic challenges is yet to be seen."