COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on businesses across the UK. The lockdown is a very important feature in fighting the coronavirus but has put a lot of stress into business owners and workers alike.
However, some businesses are booming throughout this ordeal! These are local delivery businesses who can offer contactless deliveries, online gift shops and anyone who offers food online. These are all provided they are lucky enough that their supply chain hasn’t been affected.
So – how do you thrive if you don’t happen to own or work in that industry? Well, we say it a lot but now you have something very valuable in your hands – the gift of time. Marketing can take patience and time to get things set up and running correctly, and now is the perfect opportunity to do so. If you can’t provide your services, make sure you work through the essential Digital Marketing steps.
Website
Is your website up to scratch? Have you been saying to people I really need to get that updated on my website? Have you got old information or products showing on your site? Do parts of your site not work properly anymore.
There are any number of things that everyone naturally lets slip as they are so busy with work otherwise. Don’t despair that you’re stuck at home. If you have an internet connection and something that will let you get onto the internet then you should be brushing off your website skills and getting those changes in place!
If you can’t get something changed on your website yourself – now is the ideal time to find your web developer and ask them for their assistance on this. It’s also a great time to have a fresh look at your website, and at least plan on how to improve it in future if you don’t have the resources to currently. Why not order a website critique from us to get a head start on this?
Measure
Have you got analytics in place but never had chance to look? Or didn’t install it in the first place? Now is the time to do so. You won’t know what’s happening on your website unless you view the stats, as visitors tend to use websites differently than you intend, as they find their own paths through the site. You can pick up on interesting information very quickly by viewing 6 months of stats and identify patterns, like pages with especially high bounce and/or exit rates and time spent on site overall.
Make sure you’re integrating all the platforms you use, MailChimp, google ads, Facebook ads etc. so you can view these in analytics as well. Now is the perfect time to do some analytics admin.
Improve
Use the information above and turn it into a list of tasks! Don’t get overwhelmed, break these down into a couple of tasks a day and soon lockdown will be flying by and you’ll come out of it feeling more secure in your online presence.
Promote
How do people get to your site? Has it changed since lockdown began? People are using social media a lot more at differing times of the day, so make sure to check out the stats on your Facebook page and see when your spikes in engagement are, and change your social media posts to match this. Why keep posting every Tuesday at 10am if your audience are looking and engaging at Thursday 6pm?
Engage and Cultivate
Use a mix of social media, email marketing and blog posts to keep users engaged with your content. If there’s nothing to write about now, utilise this time to run through some ideas for future posts/competitions/blog posts etc. and get some things written and/or scheduled. If all else fails, try encouraging people to leave reviews for orders taken or services given now or prior to lockdown and make sure your google my business and social media listings are optimised to say exactly what you do so they’re ready when you re-open.
Convert
If people can’t buy your products or use your services now, it might seem like there is no way to convert. But turn this into momentum for the future. Social media, your website, blog posts, emails can keep people up to date and interested for when you re-open. Making sure to have a popup/easy newsletter signup so people can find out news of when you re-open. Don’t let your marketing slip – your competitors will be hoping you do so, so they have an edge on you when your business can re-open.
But if you keep working at SEO you may find you rank higher than ever before, and add this to any website changes, email signups and content marketing you invoke in this time and you’ll be better prepared, and what could have been ‘wasted time’ is now a positive and motivating break.
If you are really struggling getting some ideas together, we are offering free 121 sessions to help get your digital marketing back on track.
Stay safe and keep positive!
