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Social distancing, quarantine, enhanced hygiene maintenance, wearing a mask are some of the topics taking up much of our lives since the deadly coronavirus has hit the world. Lives of people have been badly affected in the majority of the countries with businesses and schools closed, travel restrictions imposed, and demand for products and services dramatically shifting to counter the pandemic. As I write this, 3.12 million people have tested positive worldwide with 1.04 cases in the US itself.
Businesses have suffered major losses at the hands of coronavirus. It has become quite difficult to bring in new customers and even the older ones are backing off. Stats show a decline in investment in marketing activities. But let me tell you, this is certainly not the time to pause, slow or stop your marketing, but it’s an opportunity to strengthen, revise and re-enforce your strategies.
Let us examine some of the ways why you should change or continue your marketing strategies.
Aim to Help
The current situation has brought along a time when businesses are losing customers and suffering losses. Henceforth, it is the time to go out of your way to help each other selflessly and show that you care. Think if you can as a value add, offer to provide part of your services for free. You can post informative articles for your readers, offer good discounts on products or services, offer them free sign-ups if you own a product or a tool or even free product use for a few months.Recently, a gym trainer launched an app and provided free live workout sessions for 1-1.5 months and ended up getting paid sign-ups at the end of the free sessions. Identify what you can offer for free with respect to your business. Showing empathy during this time will not only help you gain appreciation but you might also end up getting leads and paying customers post coronavirus times.
Time for SEO
The competition will be going down for many industries as a number of businesses shift their focus to other priorities. This might be a good time for you to evaluate your content, SEO, and other digital marketing tactics. It may take a few months for the world to get some normality back and if you continue doing your SEO and other marketing tactics, you will have a better chance at getting top rank in your niche by the time your competitors get back to working on their strategies.
Get Online
Recent trends have shown that being at home, more people are now online and surfing the internet, be it for shopping, for entertainment, for workout sessions or for reading something they are interested in. If you too follow the same regimen of staying active online and working on your marketing tactics or even keep posting stuff you like, you might as well get noticed and create a pipeline of leads or even sales. Doing webinars, releasing podcasts or sharing anything that gives your audience some valuable information are some of the ways you can reach out to the world.
Make Social Media Your Friend
Social Media is the best way to connect with your audience. With people being home quarantined or under lockdown, they spend an equal share of time on social media. This is the best time to reach out to your consumers via different social media channels. Keep posting what you or your company is up to, share your funny stories (as people might need some humour as well during these challenging times), share how you have resorted to working from home (promote the platform as a good gesture), share interesting videos on ‘things you can do when home quarantined’ or even ‘things you can do to keep yourself safe from the virus’ videos or go live with your consumers to ask them how they are keeping up during these hard times and how they feel about your brand.
Go for Paid Ads
Paid ads have become cheaper as the majority of businesses have reduced their marketing investment and ad platforms are offering favourable prices. It is a good time to invest in paid ads as statistics show that the Return-On-Investment (ROI) on paid ads is much higher post the coronavirus effect. Another reason to invest in paid ads is the Cost-per-Click (CPC) and Cost-per-Impression (CPM) becoming cheaper as your competitors reduce their marketing budget. Apart from Google Adwords, google play store ad and App store ad, Facebook ad, Instagram ad and LinkedIn ad might be some other good options to consider.
Use Content Efficiently
Content is the core of every marketing strategy. This is because everything we post online is content, from videos to web content, from blog post to podcast, from interviews to social media posts. To achieve better Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) ranking, it is necessary to keep updating blog posts along with the onsite and offsite SEO. Putting a hold on your blog posts might lower your web rankings and throw your results behind a lot many competitors.
Making a few changes to the type of content you post can be rewarding. Figure out how your niche can be helpful during the current crisis. Frame your content around helping businesses and people or how can they help their business survive during times like this. Keep updating your blog with fresh, engaging and informative content and your rankings will stay or rather improve with low competition at present, around the world.
Wrapping up
Stay positive, stay connected and engage with your audience, the COVID-19 might stay for a few months and we need to do whatever we can to keep ourselves physically and mentally strong and come out even stronger. We need to keep a keen eye on our business to ensure survival during these difficult times. Hope these few tactics and strategies will help you stay ahead and hope you use the time, effectively and efficiently.
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