“Normally in an office environment, you’ve got a long sales cycle — it takes forever to get through all the stakeholders and everyone’s busy with meetings,” AdAlysis’ Brad Geddes said during our PPC for B2B session of Live with Search Engine Land, adding “Now, things that are normally six-month buy cycles, we’re seeing happen in two weeks flat.”
Shorter buying cycles and higher conversion rates have been seen for B2B businesses and can be attributed to less red tape as a result of COVID-19 forcing employers to find ways for their staff to work from home, as well as a general need for employees to keep busy, Geddes said.
Many professionals have been anticipating the opposite: impacted demand and longer sales cycles. Geddes acknowledged that “if you sell restaurant equipment, you’re probably not having a good time right now, but in a lot of areas we’ve seen really good results because of lack of meetings, essentially.”
“We just had a call today and … we’re just almost right at the efficiency goal,” said Clix Marketing’s Michelle Morgan, who also said that some of her clients who expected to see slowdowns have instead experienced a surge in business. “Part of it is trying to have the discussion around, ‘Yes, I know that we assume that everything is going to slow down,’ but some stuff is speeding up because there’s just less back-and-forth or people just really need it,” said Morgan, touching on the paradoxical nature of increased demand during an economic downturn.
Why we care. The pandemic’s impact is certainly not uniform across industries. For businesses that continue to see demand, maintaining or even increasing your ad budgets can enable you to increase conversions as customers expedite their buying cycles and turn their focus towards long-term goals.
Want more Live with Search Engine Land? Get it here:
- Click here for the full session.
- What top SEOs are telling their clients now [Video]
- To push or fetch site content: How Google and Bing diverge [Video]
- You can also find a full list of all our Live with Search Engine Land sessions on YouTube.
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Source: IAB