The battle against the coronavirus is still ongoing and has yet to be resolved. Although vaccinations and specific protocols have been developed, unfortunately, no one knows when the pandemic will end. Hence, businesses worldwide have become adaptive and flexible to the new normal. Societies in different countries continue to live and coexist with the COVID-19 virus.
As some companies are significantly impacted by what’s currently going on in the economy, there’s also a brighter side of things. New business opportunities and strategies have been discovered and are deemed effective to continue having your head above water in these difficult times. To keep your business steadily growing, continue to apply your marketing efforts.
Here are some marketing practices that you can implement now as everyone goes through life in the COVID-19 era:
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Reassure Your Existing Customers
Anyone has to face it: a business won’t thrive without its customers. Always remember this essential fact and keep creating efforts to retain your existing customers. Sure, you would want to expand your prospects pool, too, but don’t forget to reassure your current clients. Your business won’t be successful today without them. During these uncertain times, you must reassure your customers that your business isn’t going anywhere and that you’re here for them.
With the pandemic triggering panic and doubts to some of your customers, it’s vital to remind them of your responses in dealing with the coronavirus. Provide them with updates and information on how your business will be adjusting to the new normal. You can send out these updates through the following:
- You can gather your customer email list and send out email updates.
- You can post regular updates on your social networking sites or your company website.
- You can continue your ringless voicemail efforts and remind your customers that your business is still operating safely.
The most important thing you can do during this pandemic is to reassure your customers. Empathizing with them will go a long way and earn you loyal customers, who’ll stay with you through ups and downs. Stay calm and positive when reassuring clients. And, if they do have any questions, make sure you tell them how to contact you.
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Prioritize Effective Communication
Any marketing communication is only successful if the message is conveyed. As this tip also implies, effective communication doesn’t only go one way. It also means you not only inform and provide help, but you should also be able to listen to what your customers have to say. You should tailor your messages to your business, products, and customers. Communicate consistently, positively, and engagingly.
Use the following tools for effectively communicating with customers:
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Dialing Platforms
Using a compatible system with your workforce is essential, especially if your business possesses a call center environment. Using business dialing platforms, like Call Cowboy, makes communication more convenient and practical, not only for your employees but to your customers, too.
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Email Marketing Campaign
Emailing information about how to deal with the novel coronavirus can seem helpful to your email recipients, but be mindful of the email content. If you keep reminding yourself about the need to wash hands all the time, this information is already redundant. Think of something that can add value to your clients, while at the same time reminding them of your business, products, and services.
Topics like how your company is proceeding with and handling deliveries and delays these times will be much appreciated by your customers, compared to redundant reminders about taking care during this pandemic era.
The world has become overflowing with information, & people are probably receiving more emails than normal from brands they don’t usually hear from. Providing your customers with helpful information should be the goal of the email you send.
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SMS Marketing
Marketers who want to speak with their customers more directly and provide them with complete information and promotions have relied on SMS marketing. Although this isn’t something new, it remains effective until now and isn’t a thing in the past.
Due to the fact that a text message is a more personal method of getting in touch with your subscribers than an email, it’s essential to reflect critically about how frequently you communicate with them and what you choose to say, especially in these times.
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Take Advantage Of The Cheaper Paid Ads
If you take a look at the prices of online ads, you’ll notice how their costs have dropped. In essence, these extensive ad networks apply an auction system to make money. Other small and startup businesses need to drive up the cost per click (CPC) system to make big corporations spend more money on ads.
Due to the decreasing number of small businesses who like to advertise their business online, competition becomes loose, and the cost per click is also minimized. However, due to the limitations of activities among people globally due to social distancing and work-from-home settings, an increasing number of people also spend more time online, resulting in more traffic on the web. While there’s massive traffic but fewer advertisers, then ad costs also become cheaper. Simply put, it’s the perfect time for your business to advertise online. You should consider paid ads if you haven’t yet done so.
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Restructure Your Content Marketing
Answering your customers’ questions is at the heart of content marketing. Your published content must contain information that’ll benefit your target audience. The right content marketing strategy can bring back revenue from any paid campaign you paused because you saved money. And, now, you need to restructure your content marketing strategy, considering the COVID-19 situation.
Listed below are a few content marketing ideas to help you align your marketing plan with changing customer needs.
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Check And Audit Your Content
Perform a quick audit of your content, too, just as you did for your marketing campaigns. Your blog homepage and website should be tailored to what’s going on in society these days.
If you have any relevant piece of content you can update and republish, consider adding articles and content that can genuinely help them at these times. Having articles on stress management, entertainment ideas for children stuck inside their homes, or dealing with stress may be of great value. Think outside the box when deciding on what content to publish.
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Help Your Customers By Providing Helpful Information
As already stated, content should be helpful to your target audience. The COVID-19 information doesn’t have to be centralized on your website. Your customers visit your site to know about your products and not focus on the coronavirus situation, anyway.
If you expect a delay in shipping or delivery, or if you’d like to communicate how you’re keeping your customers and employees safe, provide your customers with relevant information. Depending on the nature of your business, create posts that are related and relevant to what your customers are experiencing now.
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Get Active On Social Media
Now’s the perfect time to engage on social media as everyone else is virtually present almost all the time. It’s essential to tread carefully when using social media. Apply social media hacks for your business as now’s the time to establish your social media presence. Even if you have to reduce your ad spend, you should make the most out of opportunities available at your disposal.
Apply these tips to stay proactive on your social media platforms:
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Interact And Be Social
Social media platforms are very effective when managed well. They’re avenues to interact directly with your customers and empathize with them at these challenging times.
Build trust and relationships with your social media platforms. Either you have social media staff assigned to keep your company social, or if you have the time to interact personally, you can better understand customer behavior and sentiments.
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Participate In Conversations
When the time is right, engage in some conversations. Make sure to engage the community with your business and try to resolve any issue with dissatisfied customers. Also, remember to practice patience when dealing with demanding customers as it’s normal not to please everyone. The key is to be polite and professional to everyone consistently.
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Optimize Your Ecommerce Store
Due to the pandemic, households living in areas with access to the Internet have, indeed, purchased their commodities online. This is another marketing practice that your business should be able to take advantage of. People have patronized online shopping for many reasons. Make sure your virtual store is easy to find and easy to use, and that the products you display are appealing to customers today.
Apply these tips to optimize your eCommerce business:
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Check Your SEO
A homepage is designed to give customers an overview of your business. Like the storefront of your brick-and-mortar store, it provides passersby and prospective customers a glimpse of what you offer. Your users should easily understand your business and its value propositions once they visit it.
You’ll likely achieve higher rankings in terms of keywords if you focus on a few subsets that tie into your brand and theme more than if you try to rank for a single branded keyword. Ensure that you incorporate these keywords naturally into the headlines of your homepage content.
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Expedite Speed For Loading Pages
It’s easy to overlook the importance of page load speed. Page load times that are too slow frustrate users and lead to bounces, or, at the very least, prevent them from purchasing anything. A site’s page load speed is also one of the ranking factors used by Google, which means that slower loading sites may not rank as high as those with faster loading times. So, ensure that this concern is appropriately addressed if you feel like your site’s crawling is too slow.
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Improve Product Pages
Study and figure out what terminologies your target market use to search for your product. Be very diverse when using essential keywords on your product pages. With the coronavirus pandemic in full blast right now, it has impacted the way people search things online and their purchasing preferences.
Then, write product descriptions, headers, title tags, and meta descriptions based on your chosen keywords. Title tags and meta descriptions should be unique for every page on your website.
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Offer Added Value, Like Free Educational Training
You might be able to improve your prospects if you build an online learning course and thrive. This is another marketing practice that’ll lead to great returns for your business. As more people have lost their jobs, many have been trying to elevate their skills, talents, and knowledge.
High-tech fields are usually fields wherein few people have experienced. Many people who’ve lost their jobs due to the pandemic won’t enroll in schools anymore because of insufficient resources, such as time and money. If your site offers educational training, you’ll have more site visits, and conversion rates will also increase.
Whether you’re selling your programs and courses, or you’ve developed some, which could be offered for free, all these are effective ways to attract traffic into your site as people seek more help online.
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Offer Great Deals And Discounts
Business owners can get more people interested in visiting their stores by offering special sales promotions or deals. These offers can be announced on social media platforms or even advertised through promotional emails. This old marketing method has been applied way before the pandemic hit, but it’ll remain consistently effective.
Offers like these will attract new customers, as well as get old ones interested in coming back. Many industries make use of this marketing strategy simply because they always work.
You may encourage customers to invest in you by offering discounts, freebies, and similar saving options. During a specific period, you may provide membership deals to customers who invest in your services. With strategies like this, you can still continue your business and allow your business to survive in the most challenging times.
Conclusion
To compete effectively during the COVID-19 era, marketing teams have rethought how they approach customers and engage them. Digital, social, and trust-based marketing strategies can be leveraged to navigate ongoing disruptions caused by the pandemic. With the different marketing practices mentioned above, your business can stay afloat and operate competitively in the changing market. Hopefully, when you apply some or all of the practices, your business can stay afloat in these tough times and to the continuing uncertain circumstances that this pandemic is leading to.
