Digital Marketing Covid-19 Response

Challenge

In March, COVID-19 hit the US hard, and many companies were (and continue to be) greatly impacted. Tractorbeam, like most, was forced to leave the office and implement work from home. We adapted through Slack and Zoom, and coordinated movie nights, happy hours, trivia contests, and mental health checks.

We understood that we are not the only ones suffering, dropped any idea of a pity party, and immediately turned our focus to working harder than ever for our clients.

Throughout the pandemic, we have been in constant communication with our clients. We didn’t wait to be reactionary but presented strategies to keep moving and growing. We continued to meet with our clients weekly, sometimes daily, to meet their needs.

We are fortunate that we have enjoyed close, longstanding relationships with our clients before the pandemic, which are even closer now. We understand the impact they’re facing and that we could help them get through the crisis. We wanted to be there for our clients in any way we could, be that financial, ideation, or just as a shoulder to lean on.

As of publishing, we are not remotely close to the end of the pandemic, however, we are already seeing such positive growth from the actions taken in February and March.

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Search Engine Optimization
Mohonk Mountain House
Cortland
Dallas Arboretum
D&M Auto Leasing

Paid Media
Cookies By Design
i Fratelli
Fatboy
Mohonk Mountain House
Dallas Arboretum

Creative Services
Fatboy
Basecamp
Cortland
Sightline Hospitality

Search Engine Optimization

Let’s face it, keeping marketing budgets alive during COVID-19 has been a struggle. As an agency, we decided that no matter what, we should continue to work on our clients’ SEO during COVID-19. We not only saw it as an opportunity to focus on SEO tasks that get put on the back burner but also as a way to overtake competitors that would back off SEO efforts during this time.

We worked with our clients to keep SEO active. We focused on reorganizing content to talk about ensuring their customer’s safety, as well as tactical SEO optimizations for technical and content improvements. The back-to-the-basics-style SEO efforts made during COVID-19 have proven successful.

The following analytics data compares the quarter COVID-19 hit the hardest to the previous year:

Mohonk Mountain House

Organic Users

+16%

YoY

Organic Revenue

+70%

YoY

Organic Conversion Rate

+19%

YoY

Cortland

Organic Users

+40%

YoY

Organic Sessions

+25%

YoY

Pages/Session

+10%

YoY

Dallas Arboretum

Organic Users

+20%

YoY

Keyword Visibility

+40%

YoY

Organic Revenue

+77%

YoY

D&M Auto Leasing

Organic Users

+13%

YoY

Keyword Visibility

+30%

YoY

Organic Leads

+23%

YoY

Paid Media

Clients able to keep their paid media campaigns alive saw incredible growth. Many of our clients stayed active and did not regret their decision.

We witnessed an increase in search queries and conversions from March – June to the previous year, as customers were faced with online shopping as the only option.

Our clients were remarkable in their ability to pivot to online-only, with our apartments offering virtual tours, movie theaters offering food delivery with free rental gift cards, car dealerships offering drop off and pick up and gifting companies finding themselves as the only option to celebrate loved ones. Oh, and let’s not forget the cookie and pizza delivery.

Oh my goodness, all that cookie and pizza delivery.

We are finally now seeing a resurgence in hospitality, with people going back on vacation and back to tourist attractions. While flying to a destination has yet to really come back, we have seen such an increase in the drive market.

Cookies By Design

Clicks

+57%

YoY

CTR

+68%

YoY

Revenue

+60%

YoY

i Fratelli

Clicks

+23%

YoY

CTR

+66%

YoY

Revenue

+85%

YoY

Fatboy

Clicks

+61%

YoY

CTR

+59%

YoY

Revenue

+106%

YoY

Mohonk Mountain House

Clicks

+29%

YoY *June 1 – July 15

CTR

+110%

YoY

Revenue

+63%

YoY

Dallas Arboretum

Clicks

+45%

YoY *June 1 – July 15

CTR

+50%

YoY

Revenue

+139%

YoY

Creative Services

We wanted to help our clients get on their feet by offering our creative services to our digital marketing clients pro bono. The digital and creative teams joined together to execute client creative needs, and help fill gaps. and create campaign inspirations. All ideation and creative execution for our digital clients was done pro bono.

Fatboy

stay at home mom
work from pool
relax from home

Basecamp

basecamp distance
basecamp distance 2
basecamp distance 3

Cortland

cortland campaign
cortland campaign

Sightline Hospitality

Kauai Beach Resort
Soundview Campaign
Harbor Front Inn

In Summary

We have taken the opportunity to expand our services, launching Connected TV campaigns, podcast advertising, expanding Google Shopping campaign capabilities, and some light PR (very light PR).

We are filling needs for clients in any way possible, helping them become more effective, training them on how to read and understand Analytics and reporting, and offering our continued support.

The pandemic isn’t over, but we are working with our clients to make sure we come out stronger than we were before it started.