Marketing Your Business During The Coronavirus can be tricky, but we’re there to help

In this article, we will go in depth on digital marketing and coronavirus. With everything that’s happening out there regarding the spreading of the infection, people staying inside, travelers being asked to self quarantine and so on… It can take a toll on your business, especially if you’ve got a storefront and people just aren’t coming anymore. Clearly, marketing can help reach out potential customers and we’ll go into details of how you can do just that.

If you’re not familiar with how Coronavirus works, here’s a quick recap of the infection through the WHO (World Health Organization)

Putting aside the personal issues at hand with the virus, there’s strong repercussions on your business, brand and revenues due to the widespread infection and businesses being forced to close down.

Do you own a small business? If yes, you’re wondering about a few things such as:

• Will COVID-19 affect my business in the longrun?
• What measures should I take in terms of marketing to avoid losing too much money?
• Is it a good thing to do marketing in such an uncertain time?

The last question is the most important here, and the answer is very simple: YES

A lot of business will take a step back in times of crisis, but honestly you shouldn’t. Keep in mind that there’s a few exceptions due to the nature of your business. If you’re a massage therapy clinic, you probably won’t have a lot of business right now.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double down on marketing efforts though. In the coming weeks or months (hopefully weeks) we’ll go back to normal and by then, you might have an edge over the competition because you took a step forward and made things happen in dire times.

You have two options as a business owner:

You can either be the business that goes in full hiatus, quarantine yourself away and wait until it dies off…

Or you can be the bigger player and just optimize your business while you have a bit more time on your hands.

What can you do to with Digital Marketing and Coronavirus

1. Social Media Marketing

Social media is more active than ever right now given that a ton of people are working from home or not working at all. It’s time to brush up on new techniques, finding the right posts to really get in front of your potential clients. Depending on your business, you might even have a surge of traffic and social interaction due to the time spent on social media by quarantined individuals.

2. Email Marketing

Do you already have a list of subscribers? If yes, time to make a strong email campaign to followup on them, see how they are doing and offer them comfort in times of need. Presenting them with options on how to stay safe, tips and trips to avoid spreading the disease and such. Customers love to be nurtured, feel their are cared for.

Think about your upcoming promotions and set a few emails to go out in the coming weeks. Giving your customers some incentive to choose you over the competition can make you some good sales in times of financial uncertainty.

3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Optimizing your content should be on your top priority. Take a look at which pages are performing the best and worst and optimize the bad ones. You can go take a look at the focus keyword of a page that has been performing poorly and edit it to reflect a new search intent

When going through your Google Analytics, check in the behavior/all pages section and see the pages that aren’t getting as much traffic… those are the pages you’ll want to optimize and boost ranking for. See the image below to find your way through Analytics and look into content that underperforms.

4. Social & Google Advertising

You’ll see an increase in social media ads in times like this since most advertisers know there’s more eyeballs on their ads. With everyone being home and on their computers or mobile devices scrolling through various platforms, now is a good time to get started or relaunch your ad campaigns.

Google offers in depth advertising (PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising) to get you started. Bing does too, but has a lot less traffic due to the market being dominated by Google. You can also make social media ads through Facebook ads manager (Business Manager) or simply post on your prefered social media platform and boost the post.

Marketing Efforts During Coronavirus – What works and what doesn’t

Social Media Hashtags Strategy

While there’s uncertainty of how Instagram handles the exposure of hashtags that represent a health crisis, doing a test phase with #coronavirus #stayhealthy #socialdistancing #covid2020 and such can’t be a bad idea. We will go in depth in an upcoming post once we have made our assessment on the subject with a test account.

Consistency in Social and Web Presence

Even if your business is currently closed or operating at much lower capacity (from home per example), you should keep posting on social media and adding blog content. Digital marketing and coronavirus shouldn’t affect your consistency. Your followers, customers and potential clients will see you as still there for them. Without being salesy, you can make posts that reflect the current situation and as mentioned above, using the hashtag strategy or at least try to make it work with certain restraint.

Keep blogging, now is a good time to brush up on old posts and editing them to reflect current keywords people are searching for. In times of crisis like Coronavirus, people will search differently and also a rather different type of products of services. This is where you strategy needs to be adapted to reflect the customer search behavior.

Social media on the other hand could and should be used to nurture your following by sending messages of understanding and unison in such hard times. Digital Marketing and Coronavirus does not mean that you have to let go, it’s the absolute opposite. You have more time on your hands most likely, depending on the industry you work in of course.

Take advantage of that time to really optimize your website, grow your following on increase your engagement rate.

Why You Should Continue Your Marketing Efforts During Coronavirus

You’re on board with the idea, but you still need to understand what is in it for you, your business and your brand. Let’s summarize it down here:

1. Stay on top of your competition

Imagine that within the coming month or two, you come up with 10 pieces of content relevant to your industry, revamp your website and gain 500-1000 followers on social media.

That would definitely help your business right? That’s one good reason. While your competition might be sleeping on the opportunity to boost their brand, you definitely should.

2. Get to dive deep and learn about who’s your customer

You might not be fully aware of who you’re actually targeting, but now is the best time to go in depth about who’s searching for your products or services and how you can target them. Go in analytics, check your pages, see which have the longest time spent on and which have the highest bouncerate (people going in and leaving right away).

That can give you inside knowledge of what people like and dislike from your website. Lookup websites like Ubersuggest, where you can type in any query and it will give you the search volume per country.

3. Start nurturing potential leads

If you’re in the business to business industry (B2B), you might wanna reach out to other businesses in a similar situation and see how you two can make something happen on the business front.

If you’re B2C (business to customer), you can prospect potential clients if you have a mailing list, or make an enticing landing page promoting an offer or a service/ebook that will give them value. Grow your mailing list, it will pay off later.

4. You’re Opened during Coronavirus? Let that be an asset

If you remain opened during the COVID-19 crisis, you need to let your customers and potential customers know. People have the assumption that everything except essential businesses will be closed. If you own a business that offers cloud-based training sessions for yoga or meditation per example, make a promotion to have people learn more about your service with a 3 day trial or first month half-off.

5. Be mindful of the end of Coronavirus and be prepared

There’s no doubt that as a society, we will get through Coronavirus and the economy will bounce back. You can be prepared for this by having used a lot of the tips above to set yourself up for success.

Keep pushing content, keep creating connection with businesses or potential clients, keep engaging with your social media followers and other brands/competition followers to grow and be visible.

If you have any questions and would like to ramp up your digital marketing, 360nerds has your back. We listed a few services your brand can definitely use if you don’t do this in house:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Lead Generation

Thanks and hope for a speedy recovery of our global health!

The 360 Nerds team