Businesses are facing challenging times as the COVID-19 pandemic is biting the global economy. Many businesses have been impacted, grocery stores are left with empty shelves and restaurants look like ghost towns.

As a business owner, we know that you are looking for ways to get through this.

Fortunately, staying calm under difficult situations is part of the job description for entrepreneurs and business leaders. If you stay proactive now, you can put your business in a more secure position and recover quickly once this crisis subsides. In fact, China, the country from which the virus originated, is already showing signs of economic recovery.

Do you want proof? Well, here are a few sources.

• China is lifting travel restrictions and life is returning to normal.- Source
• For the first time since December, China Reports No New Domestic Cases – Source
• China’s Economy to Return Fast to Potential Growth, PBOC Says – Source

So, if you work smarter, you can tackle the challenges ahead. Here are some key strategies and insights that you must keep in mind to help your business recover from COVID-19 impact.

Top Digital Marketing Tactics to Consider During this COVID-19 Downtime

An exclusive survey conducted by Marketing Week and Econsultancy, reveals COVID-19 will heavily impact marketing activities for the first half of 2020.

We understand that you will be carefully watching your budgets, mine every penny you made on your investment and looking for cost-effective ways to deliver your products or services.

When making budget cuts, marketing may be at the top of your list. But, a cut on marketing activities will only be a short-term fix and will not help you in the long run. Maintaining visibility is essential for long-term profitability.

In situations like this, many fail to plan. Making focused plans is more important than ever. Here are some marketing tactics you need to consider during this coronavirus downtime.

1. Do Smart Work to Keep your Existing Customer Base

You need to regularly keep in touch with your existing customers or you’ll risk losing them. Keep in mind that it is always cheaper to keep an existing customer than to gain a new one. Here are some tips on how you can do that effectively.

Marketing automation

It is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of keeping in touch with your customers. Avoid sending automated emails, instead, send out personalized,and targeted messages to customers who want to hear from you

Producing content

This is an essential ingredient for keeping in touch with your existing customer base. Share innovations you are making and any other good news like awards and client wins. You can also hire professional writers for help

Be more social

Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook are the places where people are discussing their purchasing decisions and exchanging views about various businesses. So, create a social media plan to contribute to the conversation

2. Be More Visible in Front of Your Potential Clients

You have to create more awareness to get more visibility. This means you have to drive more visitors to your website to make sales. You need to be found at every stage of the buying cycle from exploring to analyzing new offerings. Here’s how to do that.

Exposure effect

It is an age-old marketing phenomenon that helps consumers develop a preference for your product or service merely because your brand is more visible. Setting aside a budget to keep your brand visible will have long-term benefits

Update your content

Your website must have an archive of content that will still be useful for your customers and search engines. Update those content with an objective of improving the search ranking

3. Concentrate on Driving Conversions

One of the most cost-effective digital marketing technique is conversion rate optimization. Making small changes to the user experience of your website will have an amazing impact. Here are tips on how to do that.

Share positive stories

Take a look at your case studies, recommendations and reviews at every touchpoint in your marketing. Try to add them throughout your website and share it across your social media channels

Improve user experience

If you have been meaning to improve the user experience of your website, optimize your site for mobile or even redesigning your existing website, now is the time. Making small changes will somehow have a bigger impact

4. Keep Measuring

If you don’t measure, you cannot manage. If you can’t manage, you will flush money down the drain. Measuring means taking accountability for your marketing spend. Now is the time to measure sales, leads generated, referrals and key performance indicators.

Properly configure Google Analytics

Make sure if you have set up the goals and connected properly to the search console. Take advantage of all the free data offered by Google Analytics to shape a strategy

Measure social media ROI

When budgets get tight, an easy option would be to put a break on social media activity because it may appear to be time consuming and non-essential. Before you make this decision, check how social media is contributing in terms of engagement and visibility

5. Learn, Unlearn and Relearn

Always keep this in mind, there is no one-size fits all approach for digital marketing. You have to be quick and creative. Always make it a point to measure your success and learn from the experiment. Here are some tips.

• Experiments you do must always be cost-effective and easy to deliver
• If your experiment works, great, do more of it
• If the experiment doesn’t work, terminate the plan and move on. Start testing on something new

6. Other Points to Keep in Mind

Here are some other points you can keep in mind while defining your marketing strategy and action plans.

• As more people are at home in front of their screen, now is a great opportunity to use PPC marketing to connect with customers
• Competitors may stop their SEO campaigns because of the current situation. In SEO, the work you do today, will take at least a few months to affect the search. So, now is a great time to push harder to outrank your competitors
• Use local SEO strategies to optimize your website for ‘near me’ searches
• Don’t fall victim to the panic move. Such type of reactions will not work well in digital marketing
• Whether it is website redesign or adding new graphics to your website, create a digital to-do-list and finish the tasks that have been overlooked. We have written a detailed website redesign checklist, do check it out to learn more

Learn From the Experience

Try to keep a positive mindset and learn from the experience. We understand that this sounds like a cliche, but it’s actually true. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you must be really good at beating yourself up when things go wrong. But you really can’t do anything about this. Now is the perfect time to invest in your business. Upgrade your website, give your brand a new corporate image, invest in new technology, do a CRO (conversion rate optimization) audit and spend in anything else that will make your business run more impressively.

There are always challenges affecting businesses. Learn to adapt and create new opportunities. You can bounce back stronger, even from a major pandemic like COVID-19.

If you have any questions about how ColorWhistle’s digital solutions can help your business grow during tough situations like this, feel free to Call  +1 (919) 234-5140 or contact us anytime.