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ToggleMarketing for your small business is tough, and trying to market during a global crisis is even tougher; here are five tips to help you market your business during COVID-19.
Marketing for your small business on a limited budget is tough, and trying to market during a global crisis is even tougher. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, an SHRM study shows that 62% of small businesses say they’ve experienced a decrease in revenue since the pandemic began. But your small business doesn’t have to be one of them. Here are five tips for marketing your small business during COVID-19.
1. Reassure Your Customers
Your customers are your fans, and your business wouldn’t be where it is now without them. During times of uncertainty, reassure your customers that you’re here for them. Let your customers know how your business is moving forward by sending out email updates, posting regularly to social media, and keeping a calm tone and creating positive messaging.
2. Improve Your Online Presence
With more businesses having to shift to online-only operations, there’s no better time to improve your online presence. Having a strong online presence makes your business more accessible to customers, helps increase brand awareness, and attract new customers. To give your business’s online presence a boost, you should:
- Ensure that your website is fully optimized, especially for mobile.
- Perform some SEO research to utilize effective keywords in the content on your webpages and marketing campaigns.
- Improve your website’s user experience to encourage visitors to engage with your site and content for longer periods of time.
With everyone trying to keep their businesses afloat, it’s incredibly important that your online presence is impeccable. To do that, you’re going to have to get creative.
3. Get Creative
Throughout quarantine, there was a constant stream of people trying new things, working on crafting projects, and starting new hobbies that they’ve always been interested in pursuing. It’s time to get creative with your marketing strategies — the more creative you are, the better. Developing new marketing strategies can help draw in new customers and keep your business thriving. If you haven’t dabbled in video marketing, now might be the time to do so. However, it’s important to be cognizant of the situation and not force your messaging. You also want to ensure that your messages still resonate with your target audience. It’s great to innovate your marketing strategies, but always remain true to your brand voice and identity.
4. Focus on Social Media
Social media is king and most marketers know that incorporating social media into a business’s overall marketing strategy is necessary for success. In fact, 77% of small businesses in the US use social for marketing, sales, and customer service. Social media is a great way to create a buzz about your business by providing a constant stream of helpful, educational, and entertaining video and content to your customers, fans, and followers. To make the most of the “freemium” options available on the platforms used most often by your target audience. A good place to start is with Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
While Facebook may still be considered the powerhouse social media platform with the greatest influence on customers’ buying decisions, Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million active daily stories. YouTube is the video content search extension of Google. If you’re looking to share video content with your audience, you should create a YouTube channel to house all of your content and take advantage of the platform’s SEO analytics to determine the types of video content your target audience responds to best. This rule applies to all of the content you share with your audience.
5. Build Relationships Virtually
While this may be easier said than done, embrace building and strengthening relationships with your customers online. Try to put yourself in their shoes and create and share the types of content you think will help them now. Remain open, honest, and considerate during conversations with your customers. Connecting with your customers can ultimately help you create empathetic, genuine, and thoughtful content that will resonate with them.
Grey Sky Films is Here to Help
Looking for creative ways to market your small business? Grey Sky Films is here to help you develop new video content by shooting new footage or by using animation, existing footage, stock video and photos, and using video conference software. Contact us to talk about your next video production project.