Marketing in a Crisis: COVID-19

March 23, 2020

Opportunities For Your Small Business

In the past few days, the entire world has changed. Schools, restaurants and bars have closed and people all over the world are being encouraged to #StayHome. This crisis has the potential to affect millions of small businesses and an impact of this kind can be devastating.

So how do small businesses survive? Marketing during coronavirus might be the last thing on your mind — but it’s those who seize the opportunity to reach their customers in this digital season that will come out on top when all of the dust settles.

We’re going to share some of our recommendations on how to approach your coronavirus marketing strategy in this season, as well as the one thing you need to focus on (and fast) to survive the ramifications of what this global pandemic means for business owners.

Our Recommendations

Invest in Digital

The importance of having a digital presence for your business has never been more apparent than now. Around the world, small business owners are being forced to hang the “closed” sign on their doors and are retreating home, unsure of how to continue operations and where to begin when it comes to taking their product or service online.

Here are two simple ways to invest in digital:

1. Get Serious About SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Potential Customers are spending unprecedented amounts of time online at home. Now is the perfect time to reach them! Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website by improving your website’s visibility in search engines.

This involves On-site SEO and things like page load times, mobile friendliness, H1 tags, meta descriptions, keyword research, content quality and more. It also involves Local SEO, and things like social media or influencer marketing. Finally, you’ll also want to consider Technical SEO, including things like site maps, indexing and more.

At this time, it’s not clear how long the season of coronavirus is going to last and, when the recommendation to self-quarantine will be lifted. The opportunity? Potential customers will still need services. The challenge? They need to be able to find you online!

Optimizing your website for search engines is the first and most important thing that you can do to ensure that customers can find you when they’re looking to hire your services when the restrictions lift. The results of SEO are typically not immediate, and it may take time to reap the rewards. However, the investment that you make in this season is what will set you up for success in the next, and having the right keywords on your website will influence how well you’re able to generate revenue from your website both now and later.

As SEO experts our team at Juuced are happy to help you with next steps. To contact one of our team members to get immediate, affordable SEO help, Click Here.

2. Bolster Your Online Presence

Outside of SEO, there are a few other marketing methods we’d recommend leveraging in this digital season:

Boost Your Advertising

What we often see in economic downturns is companies really scaling back when it comes to their marketing and advertising initiatives. Fearful of retaining revenue, ad spending is often the first thing to go. It may sound backwards, but, that’s the exact opposite of what one should do. For those in the position to do it, actually ramping up your budget for advertising is one of the best ways to get easy and fast results.

According to Forbes, there are a number of studies that prove that there are advantages to maintaining and even increasing your advertising spend in a weaker economy. In the study, advertisers that maintained or grew their ad spending increased sales and market share during the recession and afterwards.

'When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you MUST advertise.'

The companies that are weak going into this downturn aren’t going to be able to do this, and will either go bankrupt, be bought out or bailed out. In all of these cases there is going to be less competition for you to fight against when it comes to having your product or service noticed by customers.

Depending on your niche, run Targeted Facebook & Instagram Ads, to drive more traffic to your website. It’s the businesses that are able to step up that are the ones who will win in the long-term.

If you're able to, consider maintaining or increasing your advertising spend to create a long lasting boost in sales and market share.

Get Loud on Social Media

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are spending more time than ever at home, and as a result, more time than ever on their phones. Every time that someone opens up Facebook, Instagram or Twitter for the latest coronavirus update, more often than not, they’re also scrolling through their feed to see what else they’ve missed since the last time they checked.

Conclusion

As a small business ourselves, we are hoping and praying that the coronavirus can have as limited an impact on individuals and businesses as possible (including you!). We know that the rapid changes happening in the world and the marketplace right now are overwhelming, and we understand the need to pivot to a digital marketing strategy, and fast.

At Juuced, we want to help as many business owners through this season as possible, and would love to speak to you personally about how we can come up with a plan to make this happen for your business, at a price that works for you.

If you would like to speak to one of our marketing experts over a cup of coffee digitally, please reach out to us here and we’ll be in touch with you as soon as possible.

For more information please download our guide to marketing in a crisis.

COVID-19 Guide

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