We all depend on the circumstances. We make plans for the future, work out strategies and all the possible consequences, and hope that everything will go smoothly. But certain events happen and overset all our plans, making us look for other ways to bend with the wind and remain unbroken.
It’s like today’s COVID-19 pandemic situation that has already influenced almost all business and life spheres. And if you are going to stand still, waiting for the happy end, postponing your business activity to the better days, then this post will be useless to you. But if you are going to struggle, take advantage of the situation, bring more value in return, and stay the course, then keep on reading.
Here we gathered the most relevant and the most useful tips that will help your business survive in these tough times.
Searching for new customers and leads in advance
Owing to the rapid spread of coronavirus and suspension of a big number of business operations, and eventually significant customer churn, it becomes vital to stay afloat in every possible way.
The effective strategy to maintain business operations is to focus on creating a new network of customers, searching for prospects ahead. On your part, you should give your new clients confidence that you’re on top and they can rely on you.
Attuning activities to the situation
People are forced to stay at their homes, most companies turn to remote work, but some of them suffer from such an unaccustomed process, lack of connection and concentration, disorganization, tech issues, etc. You can consider offering them new services or optimizing the current ones to assist them in solving these problems.
The greatest challenge here is that you should both meet current demands and think long-term. Your service shouldn’t be just today’s solution. You should apply most of your research and analytical abilities in order to predict a possible outcome.
Defining all possible challenges
You should think through all the problems your business might face, and work out several action plans accordingly. It is also useful to consider the worst scenario and create a strategy ahead. As it was brilliantly expressed by Randy Pausch, “Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I’m a great optimist, but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst-case scenario”.
Searching for alternative solutions
The current situation will probably break up your business meetings, arrangements, events, etc. You may simply cancel them and wait for a better period, but imagine how many losses you might have. As an alternative today, you have a lot of possibilities to hold most of all these activities online.
A virtual event can’t be a replacement-in-kind, but it still can help maintain business relations with partners, keep in touch with customers, and even provide some support. Make sure you use powerful tools or platforms, advanced technologies to host online events, pay attention to the following features:
- screen sharing and recording capabilities
- high-resolution web cameras
- chat features
In terms of co-working, consider various platforms that provide opportunities for teams to collaborate, such as Google Docs, Quip, Coworkify, etc.
Building new business relationships
Although most countries go into lockdown, it does not particularly mean that all the globe and all processes have been stopped; people still want to buy products and to use services. Plenty of traditional companies in order to adapt to these conditions will look for alternative ways of running a business, turning to Digital. You may take advantage of this tendency and either turn these Digital Marketing newcomers into your new business partners or offer them your help and services.
Using Pay-Per-Click marketing
As most people are staying isolated in their homes, they have no choice but to spend their time in front of screens. It opens an opportunity for brands to use Pay-Per-Click marketing to connect with customers and get significant benefits from it.
Completing to-do lists
Work from home can free up much time that can be used for all postponed and uncompleted tasks. For example, website redesign, content refreshing, CRO audit, SEO audit, etc. Make the most of this time, either in terms of your business optimization or in terms of self-improvement.
Aligning with current content marketing trends
Since the beginning of this year and the COVID-19 outbreak, people all over the world have been seized by panic, which continues today. It influences their behavior as well as content consuming preferences.
From a psychological perspective, negative emotions are much stronger than positive ones, and they can drastically affect humans’ minds. Thus, with this pandemic, people became negative information addicts, starving for constant news about this topic. Therefore, for today as well as for the nearest future, this theme is the hottest, the most relevant and preferred one. Including in your content news, mentions, or anything that’s related to coronavirus might be advantageous for your current marketing strategy.
Constant panicking influences people’s attention concentration, they become more distractive, consequently to be engaged, they need more powerful, emotional, hyper-dynamic content.
Furthermore, according to marketers, most users prefer video and interactive content, whereas, according to Google, 20 percent of all searches are voice ones. Therefore nowadays, voice search tailored, video and interactive types of content are of most importance.
Keep in mind, whatever content you create, it should always be SEO-centric and on-point, otherwise, it might be either passed-by or unfound.
We hope this article will help you not only save your business but also significantly develop it and make progress.