I’m sure I won’t be the first one to say this and that a lot of us can agree…

Coronavirus, you suck!

Businesses are now facing a ton of challenges and losses during the world’s isolation.

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been a big eye opener to everyone. It has caused many delays and setbacks to businesses all over the world. We are now facing the toughest economic climate of our lifetime.

So, what should you do as a business owner? Stay indoors and wash your hands? Duh. Panic? Big no no. Plan? Definitely yes.

How to Market Your Business During Coronavirus

As a business owner, you want to protect your business and employees throughout these trying times. This pandemic will require you to make decisions and take precautionary measures to ensure the success of your business. However, hasty decisions will only cost you more. It takes a lot of planning and thinking before making big decisions.

The pandemic is testing your resilience. You’re not the only one who is lost during this process. Everyone is blindly trying to navigate, understand, absorb information, and learn how to react to these rapidly unfolding events.

All we can do is hope for the best and prepare. We want to help you by sharing our own experience and the lessons we’ve learned about how to market your business during coronavirus.

We’ve divided this blog into two 2 parts:

1. Our experience
2. Our breakthroughs and what we learned

Part 1 – Our Experience

The commotion started around mid-March, when we were all asked to do our part and stay at home. This came as a huge shock that was felt across the globe. To be honest, it took some time for us to reach out to our own audience because:

• All of the uncertainty
• We didn’t want to add more noise

Businesses were bombarded with doubts, uncertainty, and questions regarding their next move.

“Should I let people go? Do I need to shut down?”

And like all businesses, we were asking ourselves the same questions.

Just Digital is a small business. We have 10 awesome people on our team, and we’ve worked hard to be able to serve other small businesses from different industries with varying sizes.

So, when the pandemic happened, we were as lost as many of our own clients.

Not only that, but we were all experiencing an infodemic. We didn’t want to add to the noise and inundate you with more COVID-19 related emails and junk that didn’t really provide value.

What we did:

The first definitive action we took mid-COVID was letting our clients know that we were still there and that we cared about them. We proactively reached out to them, touched base, asked how they were doing and if there was anything we could do to help.

There was no hidden agenda. No pitch at the end. Just a human checking in on another human during a global crisis.

After all, we’ve been with some clients for years, and we’ve built great relationships along the way. We care for them and their business like our own.

We had to be mindful of the different situations and challenges our clients were facing. We spoke to each one of them on a case by case basis. Then, if things had changed for them as a result of the virus, we determined what the next best action was.

Some of our clients were non-essential businesses and had to slow down operations, so we advised them to lessen their ad spend. A few of our other clients we advised to advertise more and put out more content, because everyone is stuck at home consuming content and it could turn into an opportunity.

“Global Web Index found that over 80% of consumers in the U.S. and UK say they consume more content since the outbreak, with broadcast TV and online videos (YouTube, TikTok) being the primary mediums across all generations and genders.” – Weforum

Mostly, we just wanted to help and take care of our existing clients by advising them when to push more or when to pull away. None of us have experienced this before, marketers still know best how to market your business during coronavirus.

Takeaway:

The main takeaway here is to be cognizant about what’s going on. How to market your business during coronavirus is not a one size fits all. It depends on your industry and the value you can provide to your audience during this crisis.

For ourselves, the experience has led us to reset our priorities and focus in on our business’ core value. We will go more in depth about this in the second part of this blog, along with a few other breakthroughs we want to share with you.

Part 2 – Our Breakthroughs, and How We Learned to Market Our Business During Coronavirus

As we worked through some of the challenges that immediately faced us, we found ourselves asking these core questions that challenged us to step up and adapt mid-crisis. Then we started asking our clients the same questions. In fact, every business could benefit from asking themselves these four questions and thinking hard about the answers.

Question 1: What value does my business provide to people?

How does one define value? Is it measurable? Does my business mean something to people? What is its worth to them? These are a few important questions to ask yourself as a business owner.

Why do people buy from you? Truth be told, consumers don’t just buy from your business because of your product or services. It’s deeper than that.

There are hundreds of businesses like yours – why do your customers choose your business?

Is it because they want peace of mind? A fantastic customer service experience? A certain feeling they get when they use your product? Whatever it is, there are many intangible reasons why people choose one business over another.

In our case, clients choose us because of 2 things:

• Results – Clients want measurable progress and real results for their business. That’s what our clients get.
• Our level of service – Yes, we all work remote, but we’re never far away. We are dedicated to making sure our clients know they are always heard and valued.

So, what did we do after we answered the question?

We continued pushing. We didn’t change our goal, we were just more mindful of the different situations and challenges our clients were facing. By no means are we perfect, but we’re always trying to deliver better results and exceptional service.

The benefit of this is that our clients are happier and they leave us good online reviews. These online reviews will act as our marketing and our social proof. The more good reviews, the better our SEO and the more people will hear about our business. More clients will reach out and the cycle repeats itself.

We basically played to our strengths, we continued providing results and improving our level of service. It’s going to look different for you and your business.

Ask yourself again why people buy from you, then make an exhaustive list of reasons why. The time will come when you notice you’re saying the same thing but in different ways. Once you figure out what that is, work to improve your product or service.

Remember, your value as a business didn’t disappear because of this crisis. You still have value to offer to the marketplace. It may be harder to market your business during coronavirus, but once you’re clear and set on the value you can offer them, start marketing to that. Make your product or service the logical choice to your audience.

Question 2: Can I adjust my delivery model?

Companies are now being forced to find different ways to do business, despite being locked home. Many restaurants are now offering delivery services, retail stores turned to online shopping services, museums are offering virtual tours. Businesses are rethinking the way they do business.

Social distancing has made the online experience even more vital.

Smart business owners know this and are always thinking one step ahead. These business owners are proactively preparing by:

• Adapting online services
• Ensuring their website is well-optimized
• Keeping their website information updated and accurate.
• Always improving website user experience
• Trying out different forms of paid advertising, such as social media ads
• Consistently producing high quality content like videos, blogs, podcasts, etc.

Depending on your industry, ask yourself how you can adjust your delivery model. How can you let your audience experience your brand with the resources you have? Think about your audience and which platforms you can find them, then explore your options.

Question 3: Am I communicating with my audience enough?

COVID-19 has been causing a huge infodemic online. There is endless junk content and false information that only adds to all of the unnecessary noise.

However, silence isn’t the answer, either. As a business owner, you have the power to reach out to people and address the issue. You can start conversations and provide consumers with the right information and educated answers.

Use your platform wisely, because your audience will expect a proactive and intelligent response from you. They will care about your company and things like:

• The health and safety of your employees
• Updates on operation changes or events
• Refunds, online transactions, delivery, etc.
• What to expect from you

Are you communicating enough with your audience? Are you giving them the information they need?

Respond to your consumers, reach out to them. They will appreciate it.

Question 4: What are ways I can creatively communicate with my audience?

In digital marketing, there are 2 ways to get your customer’s attention. The first is through paid advertising, and the second is organic: through SEO, social media, content, etc. The combination of the two will get you better results.

BUT when you’re facing a tough economic challenge – in this case, coronavirus – you will have to decide where you want to allocate your budget. Is it paid advertising or organic methods?

Once again, it all boils down to the nature of your business. Many of our clients are still benefiting from paid ads because they can still provide their services.

What was magnified for us was how to be more creative when it comes to communicating and delivering our message to our consumers.

One of our account managers shot a short, personalized video of himself for each of his clients. He simply said hey, this is where we’re at, hope you’re safe, let us know if we can do anything for you. It’s a simple thing but it meant a lot to our clients. We even got a few videos back!

This was a creative way of reaching out to our audience and letting them know we cared for them and that we were here for them. It’s important to have conversations with your audience that don’t involve trying to sell them on anything.

If quarantine has gifted you some extra time, instead of watching Tiger King again, take a look at your current ad copy and content. Tweak your messages and try to get more from what you already have. Improve your website copy, your email headlines, your video content.

Look at your analytics and put in the time, creativity, resourcefulness, and out of the box thinking to maximize what you have.

Ad costs are going down in some industries because many businesses are pulling out. If you keep up your ad budget and continue to creatively improve your output, your ad budget could double.

Small things like these will improve your marketing and business a lot. When many businesses are pulling away, now is the time to keep pushing and come out on top.

Conclusion

That’s it for now folks! We hope you found this helpful and got a few nuggets and insights from how we handled this situation.

We want to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below and let us know how your business is changing, adapting, pivoting. We’d love to hear what you’re doing to market your business during coronavirus.

This is important because as business owners, we need to team up to restart this economy, give people hope, and reinvigorate our society.

Our work as entrepreneurs is to find solutions that help create a better world. Now is the time to step up and lead the charge.