By now you should be taking safety precautions to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But you should also be taking precautions to ensure that your business survives this outbreak.
This isn’t a time to panic, and this is definitely not the time to shut down your businesses marketing efforts. You might save a little money right now but in the end all you’re really doing is setting your business on a long and difficult road to economic recovery.
There is a ton of uncertainty surrounding the economic impacts that COVID-19 will have once the dust clears. The only certainty is that we will recover. And if you’ve stopped all marketing efforts, you’re effectively starting from zero.
Logically, if your business is closed there’s no point in advertising to attract customers. That doesn’t mean you can’t still share your brand through PPC advertising. Keep in mind that many of your competitors have stopped all online advertising, so your ads will be seen more often, and for a lower cost. And once the pandemic ends, potential customers will be far more likely to remember your business.
But there’s more to marketing than just PPC. SEO and inbound marketing are also incredibly powerful tools to help grow your business. Both are a long-term investments, and now is the perfect time to double down and focus on all those tasks that you’ve had on the back burner.
Here are 10 SEO and Marketing ideas that you can tackle right now and ensure your business has a faster economic recovery.
1. Interview Your Customers
Testimonials and case studies are incredibly powerful sales tools. Using video conferencing tools such as Google Hangouts, Zoom or FaceTime and connect with clients and use these videos and transcripts to create new content for your website and social media accounts.
2. Complete an Audit of Your Content
Life gets busy and you probably haven’t kept an inventory of your content assets, and there’s a good chance that a lot of those assets are out-of-date.
Create a spreadsheet and separate it into categories relating to the types of content you share with customers. For example:
- Webpages
- Email auto-responders
- Blog posts
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Presentations
- Videos
- Infographics
Now re-evaluate each piece with a critical eye.
- Is the content current and accurate?
- Ensuring all links are functional and accurate
- What are you able to repurpose on other channels?
- Which ones get the most traffic on-site?
- Optimizing with updated CTAs
3. Clean Up Your To-Do Lists
Now that you have more time on your hands you can focus on those endless tasks that never seem to leave your to-do list. Such as:
• Computer maintenance: delete files you don’t need, ensure everything is filed correctly, ensure your back-ups are running and effective
• Accounts Receivable: Follow up on all those long-overdue invoices that you never have time to track down
• Content Creation: write the blog posts you’ve been meaning to write and any social media content you want to share
• Website Maintenance: Take care of the website maintenance tasks you never have time to handle (software updates, content updates, brand consistency)
• Catch Up On Podcasts: Listen to all the podcasts you’ve been planning on listening to
• Books: read that stack of business and marketing books
4. Generate Informational Videos
It’s expected that by 2021, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be videos. As a result there are tons of amazing opportunities for business owners to get creative with their video content.
Creating short Q & A video segments allow you to explain what you do to potential clients, sell additional services to current clients, increase trust in your brand and increase traffic to your marketing channels.
All it takes is a list of video topics, a thoughtful script and a video camera. Just ensure your video is of good quality or it will make your business look amateurish. When you share your videos ensure the descriptions are keyword heavy so that people can find them.
5. Respond to Online Reviews
Take the time to sort through reviews of your business on Facebook, Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. and respond to the reviews that need a response. Keep in mind that most potential customers reading reviews don’t necessarily focus on the bad reviews, they focus on how a business deals with bad reviews. There’s no better way to see how the business is run than by how owners respond to complaints.
Train your employees to respond to reviews accordingly, and to escalate complaints when needed.
6. Get Online, Everywhere
Ensure your business is online in every possible way so you’re prepared for anything. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught business owners anything, it’s that they need to be prepared to work from anywhere.
Using services like Dropbox, Zoom, Skype and Basecamp allows you and your employees to keep in touch and stay productive no matter where they are working from.
VOIP phone systems like RingCentral are also invaluable as you have your business phone system in your pocket anywhere you are, all you need is an internet connection.
7. Ensure Your Google My Business Page is Up-To-Date
Are you open special hours, or closed completely? Let your customers know. Make sure your customers know you’re still in business and there to help. Make it easy for them to work with you.
8. Show Your Website Some Love
This was already mentioned way back in #2 & 3, but it’s so incredibly important it also deserves its own item.
No matter how great you think your website is there’s bound to be issues with content, HTML coding or even basic functionality. Take the time to go through each page and fix these issues.
Also ensure your lead generation funnels are working. Things like contact forms and newsletter subscription forms have a nasty habit of stopping working – now is the perfect time to test everything.
And most importantly, make sure all of your website software is up-to-date – there’s no bigger security risk to your website than out-of-date software. And ensure your backup is running and effective. You have a website back-up right?
9. Get to Know Customers Better
Take an in-depth look at your Google Analytics data to learn more about your current and potential customers.
- Are the majority using mobile devices to view your website?
- Where are they located?
- What search terms are they using to find you?
- What pages are they spending the most time on?
Use this information to fine-tune both your website and your marketing efforts to ensure you are catering to the people most interested in your business.
10. Sell New Services To Current Clients
There’s no easier sale than to customers who have already chosen to work with your business. They like and trust you or they wouldn’t be working with you in the first place. Let them know about the other services you offer that can benefit them but ensure that your offer is reasonable and beneficial. Be genuine and you’re almost guaranteed a sale.
More than anything, times like these require perseverance and creativity. It’s not business as usual, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up and have a nap. Life goes on regardless of what the news says. Those who take advantage of the opportunities are the ones who come out on top (and no, we’re not suggesting you build a toilet paper empire).
