If you are a business owner who relies on online marketing to help your customers discover your product, engage, and nurture, now is the time to think differently. Unnatural times require big course correction. And that is what needs to happen with your marketing plans. You need to take into account that most business and communities are planning and preparing for turmoil and uncertain times, and hence your content marketing should talk to that change. Also, we need to remember that agility and flexibility are not enough if not supported by sensitivity, creativity and more innovative thinking. Here are few marketing tips. Share your business continuity plan As a business, you have already been making plans for the best and worst-case scenario. It is important to let your existing customers know how you are dealing with the situation and that you have a long-term plan and coping mechanism. This isn’t black and white for any business and what you say may possibly have grey areas that will evolve with the situation. Share an update about this via your official blog, social channels and also on email. Let your customers know about your actions Many businesses are helping out the society, the government and their customers in different ways. You could be contributing efforts, finances or offering a helping hand to people who are fighting this battle in the front line. Keep your customers posted about such actions, but do so in a careful way so as not to get a PR backlash. Do not sell. Do not promote drop your home-cooked favourites in the comments ?? 15.8k Likes, 606 Comments – Zomato India (@zomatoin) on Instagram: “drop your home-cooked favourites in the comments ??” Many content marketing company is talking about salary cuts and furlougs and several sectors are staring at job losses. In this situation, no one wants to risk investing their savings when they don’t know what they are going to need in the next few days. Be sensitive around your context of communication. Definitely don’t cold call! Understand what your audience wants to hear You customers and prospects are mostly in a state of anxiety with the evolving Covid-19 situation. They may be hungry on the breakdown of information shared by the governing bodies in the country. They will want analysis and research on the topic and need tips and ideas on what to do next. Content creation that can help them – blogs and infographics that could probably be circulated via email. If you are not sure of what to communicate, get your team together and brainstorm on these possible ideas – What do your customers like? What do customers wish to hear about from your industry? What are your competitors doing right? If a marketing channel is being dropped, what could be other ways to achieve the same marketing effect? You might even want to talk to some of your customers to understand what they are thinking. By the end of this exercise, you will know if any changes are needed in tone, style, and execution and whether any new channel should be adopted for outreach. Use your social channels effectively View this post on Instagram कोरोना वायरस दुनिया के विभिन्न देशों में पहुँच चुका है तथा 118,000 से ज़्यादा लोग इस वायरस से संक्रमित हुए हैं। आइए जानते हैं कि तेज़ी से फैलने वाले इस वायरस से बचाव कैसे करें | #Coronavirus #Covid19 #CoronavirusPandemic A post shared by Genus (@genusindia) on Mar 12, 2020 at 6:29am PDT The current ride on social channels is all about helping people cope with staying at home. Whether it is about helping them keep children engaged, learn to cook, learn to save, or simply cope, you can deviate to create social media content that shows you in a positive light. Use this time to fine-tune your business’s online presence This is a great time to work on things that you normally don’t get time to work on. Since how long have you been planning to redo your website content and create that explainer video. Use this time to build great website content – content that will explain to your customers what you do and sell, boost your SEO with the right keywords and get in the traffic. Have your team work on research papers and e-books that were in the backburner. Where possible, speak to an industry expert (in your customer’s industry) to share their insights on what they are doing within their organization. Take this opportunity to polish and revamp your company’s online visibility and marketing strategy. Don’t forget your SEO While you go on to create content, make sure your SEO is still on track with the changing search trends due to Covid-19. Many brands are noticing a downturn in brand searches. Instead, a lateral approach to write about topics with high relevance as per the times and optimizing it can be a source of incremental organic traffic. ‘How to prepare for recession’ has 8,48,00,000 search results. Search trends for recession have peaked. We are, indeed, living in difficult times – both you and your customers. This too shall pass but it’s important to plan We don’t know how the world will change at the end of this crisis, or worse still, when will the crisis end. But your business will be better prepared to weather this storm if you have a proper marketing plan and clarity of what the action plan is going to be if the crisis worsens and if you are ready to embrace the change and innovate accordingly. In difficult times, your brand will be remembered for how sensitive it is to its employees and customers. As a business, the content you create now will go a long way in being the light at the end of the tunnel. Choose to be that business who will be remembered for good.
Month: March 2020
8 Things You Can Do Today to Protect Your Business from Coronavirus
For those of us who run businesses, these are really tough times. There is worry about how will business continue, how will teams operate during work-from-from times, how will we survive clients dropping out, how will employees and other expenses get paid. In short, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a scenario which is simply daunting on many accounts. While the situation is far from ideal, let us figure out what we can do to protect your business from the worst effects of the virus and also come out on top. Build a remote work policy As a small business, you may never have had to exercise this option before. But having a remote work policy in place now could very well save your business without compromising the health and well-being of your employees. There are a number of tools that you can use to implement a work from home policy. From email to Slack to Zoom — each of these tools makes communication between remote workers much simpler. Apart from getting the right tools in place, you also need to get a proper plan for deliverables in place. This means making sure that every employee knows what they have to deliver — whether it’s on a daily basis or on a weekly and even monthly basis. If implementing a remote work policy seems intimidating to you, it’s important to remember that there’s no better time to do it. Your clients, vendors, and partners are all trying to do the same thing now, so there’ll be an unprecedented level of cooperation. Who knows, you may even be able to implement a policy that could serve you well even after the Corona scare goes away. Give flexibility to your employees It’s not enough to just establish a remote work option — you also need to be mindful that there are many demands on your employees’ time at the moment. Schools and colleges are closing down, and many parents are struggling with childcare. Even grocery shops are starting to limit how many hours in the day they will stay open for it. In such a situation, you will have to make room for contingencies in case your employees aren’t available at all hours. Also remember that in a global crisis like this, compassion counts above everything else. Your employees will really appreciate the consideration and flexibility you show them at this juncture, and you may even be able to build employee loyalty in a big way. Communication with clients is critical Be transparent with your customers about what your business is going through. The one big advantage of this crisis is that everyone is going through it together— so your customers will be able to empathize. Chances are if they’re bigger companies with deep pockets, they will even cut you some slack till the situation gets better. But it’s very important that you communicate transparently with your clients. If they feel like they don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, they will tend to resent you— especially since they are going through a stressful time themselves. Complete transparency and honesty is the need of the hour. Reduce meetings and travel Travel is simply not an option at the moment— you need to figure out innovative substitutes. Completely cut out all non-essential meetings and conferences from your and your employees’ schedules. If it’s an important meeting, try to figure out if it can be done virtually. If your employees get sick because of travel or meetings, you will end up dealing with a major situation in the long run. Establish clear guidelines around cleanliness The basic guidelines from the Health Ministry are loud and clear — just make sure your office policy supports them to the maximum extent possible. Avoid handshakes and other kinds of contact Encourage employees to wash hands with soap as frequently as possible Remind employees that they shouldn’t be touching their faces to avoid spreading of the virus Keep disinfecting surfaces like doorknobs, handrails, tables, desks, etc. All these guidelines should be followed in the office if you’re still keeping it open. If your staff is working from home, keep reminding them about it through communication channels like email, Slack, and Whatsapp. Think from a long term perspective It’s true that there are many unknown variables when it comes to COVID-19. Hopefully, these unknowns will work out in India’s favour and we won’t suffer from the widespread devastation that has happened in other countries. However, there’s a chance that we might get hit for a long time. While economies like China are slowly starting to recover, one never knows how things will change once the strict restrictions around self-isolation are lifted. So it’s better to be mentally prepared for the long haul. As per SmallBizTrends, 27% of business expect the coronavirus to have a moderate to high impact on their revenue. Take your sales strategy online As offline sales become harder and harder, smart business owners across the world are shifting to an online sales strategy. People are setting up simple, easy-to-use websites that allow their customers to transact online — they’ve also been setting up a solid digital marketing strategy to support this initiative. You need to realize that customers (whether it’s end consumers or business buyers) are also isolated in their homes now. This means that they are spending more time than ever before on their devices— using the internet to take care of most of their needs. Which is why a shift to online sales is the best way going forward. For example, in Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, cosmetics company Lin Qingzuan had to close 40% of its stores. However, the brand engaged 100+ beauty advisors who went on digital platforms like WeChat to increase online sales. In fact, the company’s sales in Wuhan increased by 200% as a result of this. If you feel overwhelmed when it comes