Expert Tips For Business Survive in a Pandemic

It’s October, and the coronavirus (COVID-19) is still leaving an indelible impact on the world. While the White House says a vaccine is coming shortly, there’s no news yet on how widely available it will be, who will be eligible to get the vaccine first, or how effective it will be at stopping the spread of COVID-19 and allowing the world – and businesses like yours – to return back to normal.

The simple fact is that both large corporations and small businesses have felt the effects of extended lock-down periods that, more than eight months into this global pandemic, are still limiting normal face-to-face interactions and commerce, and for some brick and mortar businesses, restricting the number of people you can have in your storefront at one time, thus slashing your revenue potential.

COVID-19 has been an unprecedented event that hasn’t been seen since at least the Spanish Flu of 1918. This means many business leaders, marketers, and even politicians are struggling with how to proceed during these difficult times, especially since the pandemic has endured for so long and there’s no foreseeable end in sight.

As a result, businesses across the country are going bankrupt and closing for good, especially small businesses. If you want to avoid this event from happening to your company, here are some ways you can make your business survive – and also thrive – in a pandemic.

Can You Grow Your Business During the COVID-19 Crisis?

The answer to this question certainly depends on the type of business you are currently operating. Overall, the need for business has never been eliminated nor will it be diminished in the coming months.

People still have the need and desire to shop for groceries, buy essential products, and lead the lives they were used to living. Do you operate an essential business? Are the products and services you have still attractive to your target audience during this pandemic?

If not, what can you do to pivot to create products or obtain inventory that will be in high-demand given your state or local municipality’s coronavirus restrictions? From retailers offering curbside pickup to commercial airlines providing cargo flights, our economy is full of several examples of companies that have transformed their way of doing business to either maintain their clientele or open up new revenue streams in the midst of COVID-19.

If your business’s revenue has decreased because of the coronavirus and you’re fighting tooth and nail to keep your doors open, what can you do to remain relevant and continue to operate despite consumers’ changed behavior or state or local restrictions related to your industry? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself to survive – and thrive – in a pandemic.

What’s the Best Marketing Strategy During the COVID-19 Crisis?

This has been a frequently asked question since country-wide lockdowns began. Even high-level marketers had genuine and desperate questions about how they could revamp their marketing strategies.

To answer all questions, the most important thing to do now is to continue growing your online presence. With more people working from home or staying at home to avoid large crowds or help their kids with online schooling, COVID-19 has caused internet usage to spike by 70% this year. Having a strong online presence will be vital in driving your marketing strategy forward.

With that said, here are some questions you should ask yourself during this pandemic regarding your marketing strategy:

• Does your business already have an online presence? If not, you need a website now. Even if you’re a small boutique and can’t ship product, creating a website for your customers to browse and then purchase curbside can boost your revenue during these trying times.
• Does your business have an intuitive, responsive, and well-built website? If you think your website is outdated, what can you do to make it more modern?
• Does your business have a stable search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategy in place?
• Have you measured the user experience of your website?

These are fundamental questions you should ask to begin the steps of improving your marketing strategy.

How to Adapt Your Marketing Strategy

Social distancing and other preventative measures have made conducting traditional business near-impossible.

Trade shows and events, for example, are now nonexistent and have all moved online, if that. Like never before, you have to be quick to modify your marketing strategy, especially if you’ve heavily relied on events and customer visits in the past.

Here are some things you should keep in mind if you want to sell your offerings more effectively:

• Increase the functionality of your e-commerce store to allow your customers to order your products and goods directly.
• Online deliveries are very common now. Make sure you provide a convenient and inexpensive delivery service to your customers. 
• Add features to your website to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as online booking.
• Update your Google My Business profile to reflect your business hours. This is very important in regards to user experience, especially if your hours have changed due to COVID-19.
• Provide webinars instead of face-to-face meetings.
• People have all sorts of questions. Create a live chat feature on your website or post FAQs to give your audience the answers they need. As a bonus, live chat makes it easier for your employees who are working from home to professionally answer your customers’ questions without their kids, dogs, or the neighbor’s lawn mower creating background noise.
• Increase your email marketing, and even consider deploying marketing automation, to reach customers that you can’t visit in person or have difficulty calling due to employees working from home and having too much background noise in their makeshift workspaces. Email marketing is also a great way to inform your customers about any special promotions you may be offering or restocked inventory of essential items that have been flying off the shelf.

Another tip we want to go into detail here is to continue creating great content. With internet usage going up, it stands to reason that more people are reading online content such as blogs. Content is a major part of digital marketing.

It not only educates an audience but it also guides them throughout the process of initial interest in becoming a loyal customer. For example, if you are running an online business, you will still need to attract qualified leads and convert them. Research from HubSpot shows that companies that blog see 126% more leads growth compared to companies that don’t.

Conversion comes through exceptional and engaging content, in which a prospect finds awareness of your products and services, becomes interested in what you have to offer, and finally comes to a point of decision. 

Whether your company is in the B2B or B2C industry sector, focus your efforts on creating purposeful content that assists your audience’s development in your sales funnel. Blogs with images are great, and videos help convert leads at high rates. Video viewers are anywhere between 64-85% more likely to buy from you then website visitors who don’t view your video content.

Give Us a Call Today!

Do you want to revamp your current marketing strategy to survive and thrive during COVID-19? Are you searching for ways to improve the scalability of your business? If so, then you’ve come to the right place. Give us a call today at (877) 682-2012 or click here to Get a Free Quote to speak to a member today.

Not big on reading? That’s okay. Watch “How to Make Your Business Survive (and Thrive) in a Pandemic” instead.

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