5 Ways to Enhance your Marketing During Lockdown
It is definitely a worrying time for all businesses especially smaller/independent businesses, as everything has come to a complete standstill, and marketing might not seem high on your priority list right now.
Over the past few weeks, we have been working with lots of clients in different industries helping them adapt around the circumstances and to create a two-tiered approach that focuses on the here and now but also plans for the future. As we write this, businesses are starting to head back to work (where possible).
There are a number of marketing activities you can do to help you stand out during lockdown and won’t necessarily break the bank. The best piece of advice we can give you is to not stop marketing. Use this time to audit, enhance, and refresh your marketing strategy during following the 3 R’s:
Review – check how you are currently doing and draft ideas on how you can improve during these times.
Refresh – keep up with trends – what can you do differently
Reset – deliver a different message
We thought we would share our top 5 tips to enhance your marketing during lockdown:
1. Google My Business.
Google My Business (GMB) is the perfect tool to keep your customers updated especially during these uncertain times. Your customers will have lots of questions like your opening times, your contact details if these have changed due to working from home, instead of having to contact you they are able to keep up to date on there.
Google My Business allows you to add posts promoting your latest information and offers which stay visible for a week. You can showcase a different service each week giving people a glimpse of what you do. You can also access insights to tell you how many views, searches, and activity your business has had direct from GMB
So review your listing, update details and make sure you are adding a post each week to promote a different service/product and links to a different page of your website. This should not take you more than 10 minutes per week and is an easy job to schedule on a Monday morning – (it is in our diaries as a weekly task!)
2. Create Your Audience.
Use this period of lockdown to build your email marketing list and write your content ready to kickstart your marketing as soon as the coronavirus is over. Once written, you can then drip feed content for your audience to look forward to.
Building an audience on social media is great but you don’t own it. What would you do if Facebook or LinkedIn suddenly shuts down tomorrow? Would you still have a method of reaching your customers?
Make a plan to build your audience online but then have a method of getting them off and into your email marketing flows. Word of warning here – do not just automatically add people you connect with online to your email lists – it is NOT the done thing, is against GDPR, and will not give a good impression of your business.
Once you have your email list, plan out your content. Remember to give your audience top tips, help, and support during lockdown – reduce the sales pitches – this way they will remember the good things you have done. Adjust/adapt your services to the circumstances, this will make people want to engage with you more.
How can you build your list today in the right way?
3. Review and refresh your website.
Now is the perfect time to give your website a refresh as we have more time on our hands, make sure you add in any new services you are offering so your audience are aware of this and build your resources.
Top things to check:
- Page Content
- SEO – when was it last updated?
- Refresh images
- Calls to Action – could you add more / less
- Add in newsletter options
- Blogs – could you write more
- Links to associations,
- Add case-studies and Testimonials
- Check Internal Links
Improve your website’s SEO this will help people find your business. As Google changes their search engines so often it is important that your website frequently changes to keep up with trends. Do you know your numbers – review your analytical data to see how your website is really performing.
At the moment your competitors will be reviewing their websites to make an impact and certainly something you should make a priority. Our top tip for a website is little and often rather than wholesale changes in one go and then nothing for a number of months.
This week we have helped a client review their stats and whilst traffic has remained the same, the bounce rate is down, time spent on the site has gone from 1minute to 10 minutes and people are viewing more pages. What is did show was that a page they really wanted to rank well for was not being found – with a few simple tweaks this situation will be improved.
Could you set yourself a target to review 1 page of your website each day?
4. Social Media.
Take time to review your social media constantly. You will most likely need to change the messages you are sending out so that it is relevant to the circumstances. Think:
- Is the message correct?
- Are we on the right platform?
- Can you improve our Bio / Company Details?
- Can we change our graphics – timeline, etc to add a call to action?
It is important to make sure you change your graphics regularly and keeping your bio up to date –this could be changing the link to your latest blog or different pages of your website – not just your homepage.
Post regularly as everyone is now online and you need to get in front of your target audience – focus on conversations to get people more engaged.
Incorporate videos!! As we have little/no human contact seeing a face makes it feel more personal and your audience will more likely stop and watch it. It feels scary but well worth the effort.
Review your analytics on social media, check your numbers have they decreased ask yourself why and map out ideas on how you can change this. Constantly review and refine – don’t just do social as you have always done – make a change.
5. Create Content.
Keep your audience with you and keep them happy. Make sure you are frequently adding new content to your website. Consider writing those blogs you have put on your to-do list but never got around to.
Consider guest blogging, this will connect you with other businesses which can also share their knowledge on your website and vice versa to get your business name out. Who could you connect with?
You now have time to write those whitepapers, articles, press releases, guides & checklists whether this is for lockdown for your audience to learn something whilst they are at home or for after lockdown so that you are getting ready for when we are out.
When things do go back to the “new normal”, you may not have the time to write content so what can you add to the bank now to take the pressure off?
Make the time count for your business, using the ideas above, what could you put into place quickly and easily? Help and support is only a phone call way – 0115 8376 260 and happy to help support businesses during this period.
