During the last couple of months, businesses have been forced to close and furlough their employees due to Covid-19. Reduced revenue and looming rents might make it seem like the perfect time to reduce or eliminate your marketing efforts and budget. From a strategy standpoint, this is the best time to plan for the future of your business. When others are reducing marketing efforts and budget, implementing these cost-effective marketing tactics today will allow your business to be competitively positioned for success.
- Direct Marketing – Compile a list of your business referrals and write a personal note to them. Let them know your business opening strategy and communicate your plans of keeping your customers and employees safe and your facility clean. Include a small marketing piece that helps them understand better why they should use your services or purchase your goods.
- Email newsletter – Reach out to your current customers with educational material and business opening information. Email newsletters can be an effective marketing tool to reach prior and current customers. Make the heading short and engaging. Make sure the return email is not from a personal email to prevent your newsletter from being tagged as spam.
- Social Media – If your business has not leveraged social media during the pandemic than you might have lost an opportunity to engage a stay at home audience. However, it is not too late to put together a creative approach to FaceBook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
- A great place to start is by taking a candid picture of your staff or product and developing a plan to post at least twice weekly.
- A great place to start is by taking a candid picture of your staff or product and developing a plan to post at least twice weekly.
- All industries have different posting best practices: research competitors, watch the social media analytics for best times to post, watch posts that get the most engagement and create future posts to their liking.
- Be mindful to not post too much or post just to post.
- Be consistent in your messaging.
- Create posts that direct users to your website.
- Create mini-videos that will engage your users. Upload videos directly to Facebook and Instagram. Avoid re-p0sting YouTube videos since YouTube is owned by Google and generally will get less reach.
- Re-share posts from agreed upon resources. For medical groups, these sources might by associations or wellness websites. For businesses, it might be your local retail association or Better Business Bureau.
- Tag and like your community businesses. Community involvement is important and small businesses can leverage each other’s audiences.
- Website Blogs and Content – Engage your staff in writing educational blogs and expanding content pages. New content on your website will help increase the website’s organic searches.
- Personal Phone Calls – Engage your marketing liaison or staff in calling current referral sources. Engage your staff in calling recent customers or patients to check in on them and to make them aware of your opening strategy.
As the economy slowly re-opens, implementing the best marketing practices will put your business in the path to renewed and sustained growth.