Coronavirus has affected many businesses around the world. More than ever, digital marketing will play a vital role in how companies succeed post-COVID-19.
Is your business able to return to business as usual? Rebuild and grow your brand's online presence with the marketing tips we've laid out.
The damaging impact of the Coronavirus pandemic has been felt across all businesses in all industries, but this is not the end. Instead, it's a minor setback for a major comeback, if you do it right!
Listed below are marketing tips from our staff of marketing specialists to position your company for success and so that you can stay ahead of the curve.
Make Your Social Media Presence Felt
Posting to your social media accounts is easy, so why not do it effectively? You're not just posting pictures or copy because it looks good. No, you're posting with purpose, and there should be a goal associated with every piece of content. For example, are you posting that photo because you want to inspire viewers to purchase what's in the picture? Are you sharing that blog post because you want to drive traffic from your Facebook page to your website? Whatever it may be, the bottom line is that you need to make your social media presence felt. Be consistent in your efforts, post unique content, and, as mentioned earlier, make sure you're posting with purpose, and not posting to post.
PPC Campaigns for Lead Generation
Everyone has been forced to stay home. Take advantage of the fact that people are spending most of their days on the internet, and generate your business high-quality leads! Google AdWords (PPC) is a great way to do just that. Devising a campaign can be tricky, but that's where a marketing company would come in handy. If you don't have a big enough budget to outsource your advertising, don't panic. In 2018, Google introduced smart campaigns for small businesses. Smart campaigns are a solution that falls under the Google ads brand and enables small businesses to create a lead-generation campaign with no prior skills needed. Although your ability to optimize smart campaigns is limited, they are a perfect solution for small businesses looking to drive new business, with a low ad spend budget.
Email Marketing to Win Customers
Would you believe it if we said that there are four billion email users worldwide? Well, it's true! Email is still, to this day, an exceptional digital marketing approach to reach a massive customer base. There are many ways you can integrate email marketing into your digital marketing strategy, but here's what you can do that could affect you now. In such times of uncertainty, nobody knows what's next, so check in on your customers! If you have a list of your client's emails, upload them to email marketing software (we like ActiveCampaign) and ask how they're doing.
You can create an email flow that follows something like this:
Email #1:
Hey {Client First Name},
In such unprecedented times, we at {Company name} wanted to reach out and see how you and your family are doing? We hope that you're quarantined and staying healthy.
I was checking in! Stay safe.
Wait 2 Days
Email #2:
{Client First Name},
I am not sure if you saw my last email, and it's all good! I know sometimes emails can fall through the cracks.
However, I just wanted to let you know that we're running a special right now where {company deal or promotion} and I would hate for you to miss out on it.
Let me know if you'd like more information.
This email flow series can go on and on, but I think you get the point. At first, you might not think its a huge deal, but something like this can help tremendously. Clients, especially now, want to feel like they're cared about, and email marketing makes it easy to satisfy that. Then, once you have the conversation started, it's a perfect time to add your CTA (call to action). In addition to these kinds of emails, you could also develop a weekly or monthly newsletter series to let your loyal customers know the types of things you're up to and how you've adapted. You'd be surprised; your clients have an interest in things like this.
Your email marketing can be easy and straightforward or tedious and complicated. It all depends on the kinds of content you include. For starters, find somewhere in the middle and get started with email marketing.
SEO For The Long Run
Out of all the tips on this list, if not the most, SEO is one of the most important aspects of modern business success. For those that don't know, SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to optimizing a website for search engine visibility. Unlike a lot of the other tips, SEO is not immediate - it takes time. Not only time, but discipline, patience, & commitment. Some of what goes into creating better SEO is fresh content, high-quality link building, press releases, social profile creation, and more. Utilize this extra stay-at-home time (during COVID-19) to work on your SEO initiatives.
You can start by checking out this off-page SEO guide that contains high-quality websites that you could use to build backlinks. Building high-quality backlinks are what Google looks at the most. Put yourself in Google's shoes and ask yourself this question, "If other websites don't link back to this website, why should we rank them in our massive search engine?"
Hard to answer, right? Well, the answer is simple - they're not going to rank you. Another question consider, "if this website has nothing but junk and spammy links linking to their website, why should we trust them?"
Again, the answer is quite simple - they won't trust you. When you're building backlinks manually for your website, take your time and do it right! In this instance, quality > quantity.
Stay active with your companies blog and continuously research new, relevant topics that relate to what people would come to your website to find. When creating content, keep a couple of things in mind. Don't, and I can not stress enough, keyword stuff! Keyword stuffing is as precisely as it sounds; it refers to the process of just stuffing your keywords into your content. Google is a lot smarter than you think, and rather than just not ranking this content, it will hurt your other rankings.
When you're writing content, remember that Google prefers content-rich sites. What does that mean? In this recent article, SWEOR highlights how, in the first ten pages of a Google results page, no piece of content in the first ten results is less than 2,000 words. With that being said, keep in mind that content is essential, but longer, information-rich content is more important than volume.
Offline Methods
Nowadays, most marketing companies will create these awesome marketing strategies for their clients that contain robust digital marketing services (i.e., paid ads, link-building campaigns, landing page design, etc.). Still, they leave out forms of traditional marketing that have been proven to work. What are some forms of offline marketing that can help small businesses? Direct mailers, cold outreach, flyers, to name a few.
A great way to remind people of your business is to create a direct mailing campaign. A direct mailing campaign should be used to promote a CTA with a deal attached to it. For example, if you own a pizza restaurant in Montclair, New Jersey, you can devise a mailing campaign that mails a postcard to 5,000 homes in Montclair, citing a buy one pizza, get one half off deal, only available to those who bring in the mailer.
Check this out: the average conversion rate for a direct mail campaign is .5% to 2.5%. If you send 5,000 mailers and convert 1%, those are 50 new paying customers, that will hopefully turn into recurring customers! For a relatively inexpensive marketing method, 50 new customers sound fantastic!
If you haven't done so yet, make sure to integrate some offline marketing methods into your marketing strategy.
Rebrand
Before COVID-19, was there ever a point in time that you felt like your brand was outdated? If so, now is a perfect time to rebrand your business!
First, let's start with the basics. What is a brand? A brand is what makes up your company's identity. Your logo, your messaging, your content, your website, and social media are all a part of your brand's identity.
Having a brand identity and strategy in place is essential to the long term success of your company. However, if you feel that your brand is outdated and needs a facelift, it might be time to rebrand, and that's okay! Rebranding is not the end of the world; heck, it's incredible to see the before and after when it's complete!
When rebranding, it's best to start small and work your way up. A great place to start is with conducting basic research. Ask your friends, family, and most loyal customers what they think of your logo; does it deliver your message and match with your company's vision? Ask them what they think of your website; is it eye-catching? Does it have the necessary information on it to describe your company? Is it easy to navigate? The kinds of questions you can ask and seek answers to about your brand are endless.
When and if you take your company through the rebranding process, keep this in mind: Rebranding enables a company to take stock and re-launch itself, building new energy and force.
Commerical
As a result of the Coronavirus, people are spending an incredible amount of time at home, watching TV. As you all know, commercials are a huge part of TV; love them or hate them, they'll still be there.
Now I know that you can argue, "well not while watching Netflix!" and you're right. But, we're not talking about streaming services in this exact situation, we're talking about regular TV. And believe it or not, billions of people still watch regular TV!
Because there are many people at home watching TV, it is now a great time to call your local video marketing company and get a commercial made for your business. Whether you want to use the screen time as an opportunity to instill trust in your brand, or push a particular promotion, getting your company in front of that many eyes can't do you wrong.
A great tip for being able to track your commercial(s) performance is to include different landing page links so you can assess which networks are best for your brand. But again, something like that would only serve you benefit if you are trying to push a product or service and want viewers to take a specific action.
eCommerce Transition
There is no doubt about it; brick and mortar stores have taken the biggest beating due to the Coronavirus. Think about it for a second, when stay-at-home orders were first put in place, how could you justify that going to a clothing store is essential?
Where were you going that you needed a new wardrobe? Target? Okay, fine - we get that you need to look good for your Target run, but seriously. Places that embody the brick and mortar model are not deemed essential businesses.
However, the owners of these brick and mortar stores still have bills, families, & people who depend on them, so they can't just sit around and do nothing?
This brings us precisely to what a brick and mortar store should be doing; transition to eCommerce.
We get it; change is uncomfortable. But it's inevitable.
Did you know that in 2019, eCommerce was responsible for around $3.5 trillion in sales and is presumed to hit $4.9 trillion by 2021? If that alone doesn't tell you why it's so important to be online, I don't know what will!
So, take a look at your business mode, right? If you sell women's clothes in a local store, look into building a Shopify store online and getting your business up and running online. Think about the potential reach you will now have by being online. You can contact your local eCommerce web design agency if you don't know how to build a store on Shopify.
With an online clothing store, combined with a robust digital marketing strategy, you could generate a lot more revenue online than you'd ever be able to in brick-and-mortar typesetting.
Hey, and guess what? Once everything opens back up, and you can open your store back up, now you have what's called the hybrid model: a physical store and an online store for people that are not local. Sounds pretty good, right?
As you already know, the Coronavirus has affected millions of people, directly and indirectly. But you can't give up! Instead of giving up, utilize the power of digital marketing to your advantage, and find new ways to reach new audiences. Need help doing this? The Dillon Ross Group can gladly help implement new marketing strategies into your business model. Contact our new business team, and let's get started!
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