A Video Message From Rick Rivero, Owner at Connections Marketing
We are all navigating as best as we can through this trying time, not only in our personal lives and the effects we’ve seen there, but in our businesses as well, some of which have taken a hard hit from the recent coronavirus pandemic.
We know how unsettling uncertainty can be. But in the face of adversity, we believe in having action plans to help us do our part to control what we can.
So, we want to provide you with some guidance on a few key tasks that we encourage you to consider during this time. Not only will these help you and your customers keep your focus, but they will give you the opportunity to give your business some much needed TLC when you just might have some time to do it.
And please remember, we are here for you, so please reach out to us if you need anything at all.
Task #1: Stay Safe and Healthy
Our clients and staff are our first priority and #1 asset. Our business would not be here without those two components, so we encourage everyone to follow the guidelines from the CDC by staying at home whenever possible, practicing social distancing, staying at least 6 feet away from others when you do have to venture out, and washing hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water. Our internal team has been doing our part to attempt to flatten the curve as much as possible and has been working remotely from home. If you and your staff can do this as well, we fully encourage you to do so.
Task #2: Keep Your Customers Informed and Up-To-Date
Where are your customers right now? The majority are hopefully safe at home and online so now is the best time to make sure they can find you and are seeing up-to-date information regarding your business. Here are a few places that you should consider updating regularly:
- Your website – If you are wanting to address any specific concerns or questions your customers are having or let them know how your business is operating during COVID-19, the best place to feature this is on your website. Help customers find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Ideally this should be prominent on the homepage of your website or top navigation and should include a link to “learn more” or “contact you”, if applicable.
- On your blog – If a small blurb on your homepage isn’t enough space, consider adding a blog post with more details. You could even consider adding a date and time stamp to show historical updates regarding changes to business operations.
- On social media – Information regarding what is going on can change on an hourly basis. Be sure to post any updates to your social media channels as this is often the fastest and easiest method to communicating with customers.
- Local listings – If your business hours have changed due to the coronavirus, update the hours on your local listings, especially on Google. When someone searches for your business on Google, one of the first things they will see is your local listing with listed hours, so make sure this is up-to-date!
Task #3: Don’t Stop Digital Marketing
Keeping your customers updated is one thing, but ensuring that they are still able to find you online is another. If you do PPC or SEO, now is not the time to pause those campaigns. Now more than ever is when we are seeing a surge of traffic on the internet today, so make sure you continue your campaigning and adjust your content accordingly. For example, if you run a PPC campaign, update the ads to reflect your current offered services. Again, PPC is the perfect outlet if you are wanting to reach a specific audience and needing immediate exposure. As for SEO, continue to work on this. We are noticing a lot of fluctuations on SERP already, so keep your SEO team on deck to help monitor and remedy where needed.
Task #4: Take This Time to Work on Your Business
As the nation is on lockdown, and if business is slowing down for you, consider using this time to get ahead and review some of the things that may have taken a back seat recently.
Review Content on Your Website
When was the last time you updated your homepage? Do you have slider banners? When was the last time those were updated? If your business is slow at the moment, take the time to think ahead and adjust the content on your website to better match what your business is currently doing (or was doing) for this year.
If you have slider images, consider getting those updated as well. Content and visuals will become stale after too long and lead to customers naturally glazing over the messages, so even if you want the CTA (call to action) to be the same, change out the image of the banner to help spark new interest.
Update Your Bio or About Us Pages
Going along the lines of updating content, think about updating your Bio or About Us pages. If you received new certifications, awards, etc., be sure to add this to your website. If you’ve been in business for 25 years as opposed to 20 years, let your customers know. And FYI, from our experience of reviewing our clients’ website analytics, the About/Bio page is often times one of the top pages that customers visit during the consideration phase of the buying cycle. So giving your customers the most up-to-date, accurate, and dense information that you can about yourself, your team, or your business as a whole, will help lead your customers to ultimately make the decision that’s right for them – which we’d hope is to contact you!
Create Rich Content
Have you ever thought it’d be nice to have video tutorials for your customers on how to use your system or product? What about creating that one infographic you’ve been wanting to have as a visual aid for your sales process? And don’t forget those FAQ’s; we all have that growing list of frequently asked questions. Now is the perfect time to work on all of those things.
As business owners or managers, getting to these items often takes the backburner as it requires work to even delegate. However, videos, infographics, instruction manuals, etc., are all considered rich content that your users and even staff would love to have, especially right now. So set some time aside to draft up this content. Also, by being unable to work with customers or staff directly, having this rich content available could ultimately help customers and staff help themselves.
Audit Your Audience
Considering what is going on right now, take a step back to review where your customers are currently at. In Illinois, as we’re currently going through the “Stay-At-Home” order, many non-essential Illinois businesses are required to temporarily close their doors. With less foot traffic, is your business still able to run and assist customers?
Some ways to adapt your business is to consider going digital. For example, if you are a hair salon, consider reaching out to customers and suggesting that they schedule their services in advance for when doors are open again or you can suggest that they purchase gift cards or gift certificates to use in future.
From our personal experience, we actually have a few clients who are finding that by having ecommerce set up already, they were able to adjust their businesses to facilitate for curb side pickup and delivery very easily. For these clients, it was a blessing having this set up prior to this outbreak happening. We also have a few other clients who are using remote support assistance and getting more involved with their online chat functions.
There are so many tools that you can take advantage of right now to help keep your business running during this shut down. Here are just a few examples of what you can utilize and note, that these tools are relatively quick to set up:
- Enable a live chat for your website for immediate questions and support
- Set up video conferencing in place of in person consultations
- Offer live streaming services to help customers still “attend” classes, services, etc.
Where Are You at Right Now in This Challenge? Tell Us, Because More Than Likely, We Can Help!
Here at Connections Marketing, our entire team is still virtually signing in every day and are readily available to help you through this! Need a message to go out ASAP? Let us know and we’ll create the content. Looking for assistance keeping your social media pages up to date and customers informed? We can do that too! We can even help you work through that backburner list of creating your rich content.
And for those who wished your site had ecommerce, it’s not too late! We are truly a full-service marketing agency. We have the expertise in digital marketing, creative, development, and overall consulting so if there is something that you need but aren’t sure how to go about doing it, give us a call. We’re here and we’ll walk you through this.
We truly hope you all stay safe and healthy!