No matter who you are, running a business is tough during a crisis. Thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, everything from the travel and tourism to hospitality has been hit hard. Before March, it would be unthinkable to say that 80% of hotel rooms are empty, or that low and high-budget airlines are on the brink of collapse.
However, it’s not all money-related… Yes, your ability to turn a profit will help you to keep your head above water, yet one of the biggest killers is wasting time! With more people shopping and consuming products and services online, and consumers slowly stepping back into the market, you can’t afford to be slow on the uptake.
Wasting time is a death sentence. However, you can be more time-efficient with your marketing effort in four easy steps. Continue reading to find out about how successful businesses are managing their schedules during the crisis.
Updating Outdated Processes
This isn’t only a reference to stacks of paper that are sitting on your desk waiting to be processed and signed. Clearly, the age of dead trees in the office is over, or at the very least, it’s being phased out. But you can still invest in ‘modern’ software and suffer from procedures that are slow and in need of repair.
The key is only to use technology that is going to make a difference to your workload. Google Ads workflow automation scripts do this as marketing, particularly in conjunction with search engines, is a significant part of generating leads and improving conversions.
But be wary of tech and marketing that doesn’t integrate into your existing plan, or that sounds effective yet adds no value whatsoever.
Not Communicating Too Often
Make sure your customers understand your plans for getting back to “normality.” Be as clear and transparent as possible, but it’s NOT helpful when you over-communicate.
The big problem is attempting to communicate on every social media platform… Not only does it absorb a huge chunk of your resources, specifically time, but your target demographics might not even use the channels.
Although it’s tempting to cover every base, it takes too much effort and energy. Instead, the best marketing tool post-COVID is to identify a single community where people engage and hit it hard. You’ll find that this strategy reaps bigger rewards in terms of lead generation and conversions.
Avoiding The Blogging Numbers Game
It’s not hard to figure out why businesses lean on blogging, especially during a crisis. You have to get information out there, and content marketing is proven to work. Statistically, you can expect quite a big bump in traffic from a single blog post, if it’s well-researched and well-written.
Of course, “if” is the operative word here. Content ranks highly with audiences and search engines when it provides value. It does this by answering questions, for example. The fact that 60% of marketers currently publish one post per day tells you how saturated the industry is. It also highlights how easy it is to churn out copy that isn’t to your high standards.
If you’re playing the numbers game, you need to stop! It’s more useful to your advertising strategy if you focus on quality as this is what keeps readers coming back, even in a pandemic when they have more time on their hands.
Engaging With Comments
The number of comments on your website and social media accounts might have been slower than usual of late. It’s understandable as, although boredom has encouraged people to spend more time online, there is a monotony issue. At least when they had less free time they’d choose selectively.
Now that you might have more time on your hands, the first thing to do is reply to every comment/review. Show your audience you’re actually listening to what they have to say and acknowledge the time/effort they took to leave you a review or comment on your post.
How are you dealing with the COVID-19 crisis and the impact it’s having on your company?