Should You Continue Marketing During Coronavirus?
Should you stop marketing during coronavirus at this time of global panic, or go full force? Amongst the concerns flying around about personal health, are real concerns for business owners endeavouring to keep their businesses and livelihoods afloat.
If you’re a business owner, you may be feeling like you should hold back on your marketing, with the mindset that there is no point in investing, as no one is going to be looking to buy your product or service right now. In reality, thinking this will likely only leave you without sales, leads or business. That’s why now is the time to be pushing and extending your marketing efforts – and more than ever.
By putting your business out there, you will enhance your opportunities and get ahead of your competitors, who may not be thinking as smart as you will be by the end of this article.
With people working from home, kids off school, and families isolating indoors, more people are online now than ever, which makes it the optimum time for you to be online in as many places as possible. Whilst people are at home and engaging in more online activity than usual, you’ll be able to gain more insight into the patterns and behaviours of your target audience, such as when they are most active, and what makes them commit to actions such as making a purchase or signing up to your service. You can and should use this to your advantage, finding opportunities to incorporate the elements that your audience interact with into your content, using it to grab their attention or solve their problems with your offering.
If you’re working from home yourself, you probably have some extra time on your hands that you might usually spend in meetings or travelling. If this is true for you, or find that business is falling short, use some time to follow up on lost leads and strengthen your current and potential customer relationships with your marketing. This can be as simple as putting out the message that you are here if they need your services, and offer any additional help that you can.
Here are some platforms and ideas to get involved in, and how to use them to your advantage…
Social Media
If you’re a new-start business and haven’t set up your social media accounts yet, then now is the perfect time to do so. Equally, if you have yours established, you should be as active as you possibly can across your channels, placing the messages that you want to convey exactly where your audience is scrolling! Consider using paid advertising to boost a particular post or product if you want to go a step further and be seen by more users.
Email Marketing
This is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience and connect with existing clients. Newsletters and regular weekly or monthly mail outs are a great way to provide entertaining and informative content to your contacts. You could include good news stories, latest projects you’ve been working on, new blog content or tips and tricks, to name a few; all of which add value to the receiver. Or, you could work on building a new or current mailing list to gain new contacts (who could be prospective clients). Either way, email marketing is a cost-free way to provide valuable content to engage your audience, build brand awareness and loyalty, and increase your chances of acquiring and maintaining business, post pandemic!
Many people will be using this time to plan a project, whether decorating their home, planning a wedding or party for better times, or finally starting a new project or business. Think about your brand and what it has to offer in relation to some of these project journeys people may be endeavouring on. Pinterest for Business is a platform enabling you to create and save Boards and Pins (posts) in categories which can be found and saved by users. This is an easy, cost-free way to bring visitors to your site and collaborate with others whilst increasing your brand’s awareness.
Search Engine Optimisation
Consider whether you could further optimise search results for your business or product, whilst people are searching for various products and services even more than usual. There are many ways you can do this from optimising keywords and headers to alt-tagging images. You can find out more from online research, or have a professional manage this for you. You can also optimise your social media! We outlined our top quick Social Media Optimisation fixes for increased leads here.
Create An Offer
Think about the means you have to give away a free product, voucher, resource or some of your consulting time. You could do this in exchange for reviews, sign-ups or social media shares, likes and comments. Or, you could create an offer for a limited time, or simply to help people in difficult situations. Any offer is almost guaranteed to bring people to your door and allow you to build future relationships.
Update Your Branding
There’s no time like the present to update your branding and website design. If this is something you’ve been meaning to look in to for a while or your image needs a refresh, do it now! Seriously. The benefits of effective branding are endless, and whilst many people are likely to come across your company now, make sure it really is as good as it can be, and conveys the right message. If you’re not sure what to improve or where to start, we have an award-winning creative team on hand to help, passionate about building brands and websites that set you apart from competitors.
It’s important to remember that this is temporary! When businesses begin returning to usual, you’ll be in much better stead if you have a strong marketing foundation to continue building on, rather than having to start again from scratch whilst your competitors get ahead. If you don’t have the means to focus on your marketing as much as you’d like, 5th Brand Creative is here to help with anything from branding, website and creative design, to complete management of your marketing and social media.
