As a digital marketing company serving the small businesses in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia, we are obligated to share our expertise in the digital marketing strategy for small businesses and help our fellow small business owners who are greatly affected by this COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pandemic disrupted everything
Did it come to your wild imagination that a pandemic would disrupt our normal life this year 2020? Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) our personal life, business affairs and school are no longer the same.
Whether we like it or not, it’s happening around us. People are scared of this pandemic that has made more than 3 million people sick and roughly 300,000 deaths worldwide as of today and counting.
And because of this, we need to consider two things:
- We need to accept that this is the new normal for the time being.
- We need to adapt to new ways of doing things in our personal and business life.
We need “ACCEPTANCE”. Welcome to the new normal!!! Yes, this is for the time being until a vaccine that is proven effective against COVID-19 and safe to be used to human beings is discovered and approved by WHO.
The Top4 Small Business Marketing Strategies to fight COVID-19
What is small business marketing?
Marketing is everything an organization does to build a relationship between the company and the consumer. Marketing attracts prospects, prospects become buyers, and buyers provide profit. But marketing is more than just putting your business name out into the world.
However, due to this present pandemic that the entire world is experiencing, some of our traditional marketing plans of marketing small business are not applicable for the moment, such as joining a face-to-face networking group, trade fairs, distributing brochures on busy streets etc.
The alternative small business marketing strategy
These are the possible ways to adapt during this pandemic so that small businesses will continue to thrive in spite of the big challenge of doing business during this coronavirus outbreak.
1. Contact your existing clients
Yes, keep in touch with your existing or past clients and inform them that you are still available for providing services, but with precautionary and preventive measures to protect your staff and clients from this coronavirus.
How do you contact them?
Gather their email addresses and send a personalised blast email. This is where email marketing comes into the scene. This is why it is very important for you to have a database of all your past and existing clients, keeping in touch with them gives them an impression that you are not the type of a one-time service company.
In your blast email express your concern for the safety, need and comfort of your clients. By doing this you create a lasting impression that leads to repeat order or transaction as well as gaining new customers as a result of recommending your services to their neighbours, a word of mouth marketing during this pandemic.
If you have no available email of your clients, but you have their contact phone number, then that is your doorway to get their attention to you and your services.
Why must you contact your past and existing client?
This is important to do because somehow they may be needing your service, but due to the pandemic, their attention has been diverted to some concerns related to COVID-19.
2. Advertise on the radio
Yes, this is very traditional, but the truth is it greatly depends on your type of business and your target market. If based on your research your potential customers are hanging on to radio then it is a good channel to advertise.
Check with your local radio regarding their rate and then try to compare it with other marketing channels, especially digital marketing channels.
3. Invest in a digital marketing strategy
Yes, this is another part that you need to accept as a business owner. We are now in the era of highly technological marketing. Here are the following ways that you can reach your potential customers without necessarily going out from your store or homes especially during this pandemic period, it called digital presence
Publish your business website
In one of Forbes articles entitled “Why Does Every Business Need a Website?”, Kasey Kaplan the founder of KWK Studio & Quuie shared the following brilliant reasons:
“A business’s online presence, regardless of industry, can have a massive impact on its success. In this day and age, some businesses still don’t realize that a majority of their customers will visit their website before making a purchase.
Having a strong online presence, particularly a website, can make or break for generating more revenue. Yes, the quality of your website impacts results, but the purpose of this article to stress the importance of making sure you have a website.”
The important point here is that your business must have a website, period. For the reason that a majority of their customers or target audience will visit their website before making a purchase.
Kaplan said that “If you still need convincing, here are the top reasons it’s important for your business to have a website”:
Build Your Business Credibility
One of the main reasons you should have a website for your business is to increase your organization’s credibility.
Build Your Brand Awareness
Showcasing your brand to your prospective customers is one of the most important things that you can do. By clearly establishing who you are, what you represent and what you stand for, you increase the chances of your customers buying from you.
Build Your Business Leads
Once people find you online, become interested in your product or service and want to know more, they’ll know how to contact you thanks to the information on your website, which gives you the opportunity to increase your sales.
Build Your Website Organic Search
When your website is online and has an SEO-optimized website, you have a chance of showing up in Google search results. This means that when people are searching for a product or service, there is a chance your website will show up in the results. This gives you the opportunity to drastically increase your customer base.
Complete Digital Marketing Strategy
Without a digital marketing strategy, businesses may experience everything from incorrect marketing channels and budget allocations to low organic rankings, website engagement, ROI and quality leads.
A study by Smart Insights shows that 4 in 10 businesses don’t have a “defined” digital marketing strategy. In fact, CNBC reported that “billions of digital marketing dollars are being wasted as online adverts miss their intended targets.”
So how will you be sure that you have a good and effective digital marketing strategy?
It’s not a tricky question, and you don’t need to waste your time thinking about strategies by yourself, because there are good and honest digital marketing agencies that will help you and do the whole marketing effort for you at a very affordable package: from web design, paid search or google adwords, social media marketing, landing page creation to search engine optimisation (SEO).
4. Use this time to take a step back
Look, we get it. Running your business is not easy. We’ve been so busy… that this pandemic, while it may set us back a few steps from our original plan, actually gives us the time to take a breather, if we look at it another way. Now is the time to do the things you’ve always wanted to do, but never had the chance to. We went through this topic a while back in one of our articles, but basically, here are some things you can do now:
Look at your competitors
Taking a peek at your strongest competitors can give you invaluable insight and know-how on what to do for your own website. Using tools such as WhatRuns or BuiltWith lets you see what plugins and tools your competition uses and replicate, or even improve, these features on your own site. You can also see how popular their website is with Similar Web.
Is your website current?
Use this time to update your content, images and refresh your blog, especially if you are like most small-business owners who have not actively done anything on their website since 1992! Are all your products and services listed and reflected in the best way? You can also use tools such as HotJar to heatmap and see where visitors go, not go or drop off. This can be crucial to maximise visitor capturing and conversion when traffic picks up again.
Keyword review
When was the last time you checked and updated your keywords for search marketing? With tools like Google Trends, you can easily see if you can find stronger and related or rising keywords to bolster your search results. As consumer behaviour changes, so do search terms and you could be missing out on crucial traffic. This is the time to streamline your keywords and maximise ROI on your Google marketing. For more details, this article tells you how to find the perfect focus keywords for your business.
Review your digital marketing budget
Are you spending on marketing efforts that don’t bring results or are not as strong as others? Assessing the most effective tools can be difficult so revisit your budget, your activities and gauge your investment ROI regularly. Check your marketing spend carefully – you may need to scale some activities down, shift funds to others or buckle down on expenses. Shift your reduced spending to the most effective marketing activities.
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Source: growmybusinessonline, insidesmallbusiness