It’s a scary time for small businesses during this COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses have closed, others have lost most of their customers. Most have been reduced to skeleton crews or a remote workforce.
Continue or Pause Your Marketing Campaigns?
With everyone in panic mode around COVID-19, many business owners are not sure whether to continue or pause their online marketing campaigns.
Businesses that should increase online marketing campaigns
If your customers can get your product or service online, you should keep at it. Some of these include online classes, financial related businesses, and more. Anything where your customers’ fulfillment is online
Other Opportunities Worth Knowing About
There may be opportunities that you don’t want to pass by. Here are various tips to help you come out on top during this pandemic.
1. Enhance Your Digital Presence
Considering a website redesign or thinking about enhancing your website with new functionality? Have you been considering eCommerce? Now is the time to shift your focus to serving your customers online, instead of in the store.
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There are lots of ways to improve your digital presence, including introduction of new technology, such as:
2. Website Personalization
- Headlines and hero images. For most site visitors, the homepage and other key landing pages are the first touchpoints they interact with.
- Call-to-action
- Customer testimonials and logos
- Featured blog posts and other content
Now is the time to think about how to improve your digital footprint and provide your customers with a better user experience as they engage more with your company online.
3. Reassess & Reallocate Your Marketing Budget
Clearly, trade shows are simply not an option with the COVID-19 pandemic. If you were planning to invest in trade shows or other in-person events, you should divert those dollars into other channels, such as digital marketing.
4. Change Your Delivery Method
If you have a brick-and-mortar business where you’re no longer able to see customers/patients in-person, then see if you’re able to generate revenue or generate leads or set appointments through other means.
Here are some ways you may be able to change your delivery methods during this pandemic:
- Dentists/orthodontists can offer virtual consultations instead of in-person consultations: https://www.capterra.com/dental-software/
- And the same goes for financial advisors and other types of professionals: https://www.salesforce.com/products/financial-services-cloud/overview/
- Local retailers can offer to deliver goods to customers instead of people coming into their stores:
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- Other businesses can offer discounts for payment up-front. For example, some restaurants are offering “bonds” where customers can pay $75 to get $100 worth of food in the future when the restaurant reopens. Businesses could do something similar with discounted gift certificates.
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5. Focus on Your Existing Customers
We all know it’s much easier and less costly to market to existing customers versus acquiring new customers.
The key question? What else can you do to help your existing customers?
Can you offer additional products or services? Can you speed up your delivery for an additional fee? Can you sell more with a bulk discount? Can you partner with another business to enhance your product or service?
6. Increase Social Media Activity
The #COVID19 pandemic will continue to impact marketers in the upcoming months. Make sure your marketing strategy is agile to make adjustments in response.
Now is the time to keep up with social media to reassure your clients that you are active and present. Staying engaged and entertaining your customers will help to maintain a connection.
Finally, social media is a great tool to get in front of a new audience. People are spending even more time on social media during the pandemic, so now is the time to get in front of them. If you are not already, consider advertising your products and services on social media to reach a new audience.
7. Engage With Your Customers via Email
We have all received countless emails in the last few weeks regarding businesses’ responses to COVID-19. If you have not already, send out correspondence to reassure customers of your company’s response to the pandemic.
Beyond the response, consider a new email campaign to engage with your customers. Since you cannot meet face-to-face, or in your store, use email marketing to connect with your customers on a digital level. Maybe consider a video and send it out to your customers. Or craft new content marketing pieces in response to the pandemic.
Use your email marketing as a direct connection to your customers and connect with them about the services and products that matter most to them.
4. Expand Google Search Marketing
Make sure you are paying close attention to your keyword rankings and organic traffic during this time.
Continue to evaluate the search engine results pages to determine opportunities for new content to respond to new types of queries in the search universe. Also, pay close attention to Google trends to see what fluctuations in search volume have occurred for your target keywords.
The Coronavirus pandemic will continue to impact marketers in the upcoming months. Make sure your marketing strategy is agile to make adjustments in response to them.
Need to update your website? Time to get started with an online business? Let’s work together!