The COVID-19 crisis has brought a great level of uncertainty to small businesses and forced them to make difficult decisions. Small business owners have to do everything possible to react strategically besides maintaining their full team and gripping the client base.
We all know, physical reach is tougher than ever, and that being said, the importance of online presence has gone higher than ever.
Among the best practices you can adopt for your business currently is to cherish all ways your company can show improvement and reach more people. Your preparation needs to be strategic, as, like you, your competitors are also considering to increase their online presence.
You need to be well-positioned when the business goes back to normal, and the path is tough without the right knowledge. With the huge number of people at home, and naturally online, honestly cherish the extent of your digital presence and ensure it’s as powerful and productive as it can be.
So, what should you do?
Update your website and review your digital marketing strategies. After that, find the ways you can bring betterment. This pandemic certainly won’t last forever, so maintaining a presence in your space is necessary for the long term success of your company.
Our guide outlines a solid game plan for “things to do” to manifold it after this lockdown.
Contents
- Use Social Media and strongly Communicate with Your Customers
- The conclusion
Use Social Media and strongly Communicate with Your Customers
No matter you consider yourself as an active person in a digital world, it’s pretty crucial right now that you tame the social media tools and make them work for your business.
Your connection with your existing clients needs to be strong. Besides that, you should reach new customers for the sake of recovery in case some of your old ones leave you.
Here are our best recommendations regarding social media right now.
Posting once/twice per day is the best strategy. You neither need to be too sloppy nor too active.
Your all social media profiles’ need to be updated, and if there are business messages, queries, etc. respond quickly. Continue letting the public know that you’re open in all of your posts.
If you’re a “people person” in your business, features including IG TV, Youtube, Facebook Live, etc. can be highly helpful for you to maintain a personal connection. You can record yourself and present yourself to your clients.
On a few platforms, including Instagram, users follow hashtags, and they can view your posts if you used the correct while posting. Just use relevant hashtags for your business with the most activity for all platforms. For instance, while posting related to COVID-19, #covid_19 should be used on Instagram but on Facebook, it should be #covid19.
Don’t hesitate to shed a few bucks on social media ads. If you feel that you aren’t able to bring much engagement to your website or social media page, then something like running a FB advertisement campaign can do for you! Most importantly, you can choose your target audience there.
Be on the first page of Google by Investing in Google Ads
We all know how favorable it can be if our business appears in the top Google search ranks. Reports based on past U.S. recessions exclaim that businesses that continue advertising during a crisis grow!
By reaping advantage out of new opportunities, you can position yourselves for growth, most importantly, after this crisis has passed. Undoubtedly, Google ads can be expensive, but the current investment can highly maintain your business graph.
The strategic placement of your business-related keyword on top Google searches can undoubtedly generate a whole new client base for you!
Optimize Your Website for New Opportunities
Besides adding a simple banner to your website’s top, you can add relevant keywords receiving a huge search volume currently to the headings and your website’s content.
This can highly help people searching for your website/product/services find you organically in Google. A few free tools are available to help you find out which keywords have huge searches right now. Here is hose:
Taking benefits of these amazing free Search Engine Optimization tools will certainly help your long-term marketing strategy. If you include keywords related to your services, it will certainly push you up in ranking on Google search results with time to appear on the highly valuable first page results.
Say YES to Digital Marketing rather than Outdoor Marketing
While some people are driving around, pay attention to outdoor marketing to online advertising. In contrast to before March 27, the usage of social media has elevated by 46%, while Google searches are elevated by 33% as per Whiteshark Media.
Besides that, if you can cancel event marketing and convention due to the “Act of God” clauses, shifting your budget to digital marketing is a much more valuable move currently.
Keeping advertising during this time is crucial but spend your budget smarter. Check your online listings across the internet…, and Google isn’t the only thing we mean here. In today’s technology-driven landscape and highly competitive, you’ve likely got your business listed in several major online directories, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Yelp, etc.
Besides all these big players, don’t underestimate the criticality of some of the less known directories, and several might be local to your business. That can be highly helpful. Listing your business in maximum online directories possible can strengthen your digital visibility and presence.
Having your business consistently and accurately listed on numerous local business directories is SEO supportive, as it helps search engines display your profiles confidently more often for keyword searches.
Check out your competitor’s strategies
Stealing ideas is a part of the corporate world, and it isn’t wrong, though. If you feel that the aforementioned is either out of your reach, or you think that you won’t be that beneficial, then you should start tracking your competitor.
Running a successful business highly depends on how knowledgeable you are regarding your competitors. What they’re doing which is working out for them, and how exactly they’re doing it. Most businesses do mark online presence, so tracking their activities is actually easier! Through your research, you can take note of:
- Overall marketing strategy and tactics
- Products or services
- Branding and design
- Pricing
- Media activities
- Customer loyalty programs
- Ownership
- Content
You can then process, mold, and use this information to be strategic regarding your pricing and marketing, and reap the advantage of whatever deficiencies you noticed in your competition. Where they lack is exactly how you can differentiate (actually dominate) your business.
The conclusion
During and after this crisis, just marking your online presence isn’t enough! There’s much to do, and it’s true that if you don’t consolidate your online presence right now and don’t put your business’s impact there, you’ll fall behind in the upcoming time.
The aforementioned tips will certainly enrich your business with a bigger client base and also strengthen you financially. Yes, it may include expenses, as per the demand of your industry and niche, but if you invest smartly, you’ll enjoy fruitful payback in the upcoming time!
People have free time, and that’s why they’re more online, and you have to capitalize on the situation! Businesses can grow 10x faster if they strategically plan their online presence, target the right audience, and advertise smartly!
So, do you know some online magic? Is there any trick popping in your mind? Can we expect you to drop your ideas down there?
