Nobody knows how long the Coronavirus (or COVID-19) will last. Businesses are afraid that they can have a financial loss during this time.
On the other hand, governments are implementing various policies to protect their workers and people from this epidemic situation.
In many countries, based on numerous made decisions lots of restaurants, shopping, fitness, entertainment, and other centers are currently closed. But the sad part is that many people still have to pay taxes, rents, and have other expenses.
What to do now?
This is the question many entrepreneurs and business owners ask themselves.
The answer is simple – Keeping calm and concentrate on the current situation (trying to get any perks from it).
This is not a time for panic. You should think flexible to get the most at the time when the others are nervous and in fear.
However, if you’re owning a business, Startup, or other types of enterprises you should be flexible and work hard to overcome the obstacles on your way.
If you work smart you can even benefit from this bad tendency.
I have gathered all the possible strategies you can implement to get the most out of these long months of disease.
Let’s check them out!
1. Interview & Hire New Employees
If you wanted to expand your business and/or to hire new employees, it’s the right time!
Use Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts to host, record video calls, or organize interview processes.
Google has made its hangouts Paid Version now completely FREE until Jul 1, 2019, so you can get benefit from it as much as possible.
Also, it’s worth to mention that among the advanced package features include:
- Larger meetings with up to 250 participants (per call);
- Increased audience limit live streaming;
- You can Freely record your meetings and afterward save them to your Google Drive;
- Finally, secure cloud-based file storage per user (Unlimited instead of the basic package of having 30GB).
Undoubtedly, this will help businesses to implement the interview processes online without having any risk from coronavirus for their employees.
New to Google Hangouts?
Not a problem – here’s how to make interviews using this advanced tool:
Also, this will make the interview process faster and will provide the ability to review the whole interview process later and make justified decisions.
2. Work on Your Online Reviews Strategy
Having an effective online review strategy is an especially crucial strategy for local businesses.
Yes, it’s not a hard tactic but it requires quite a long time and much effort to get the desired results.
Here are some strategies you can use while at home to make your reviewing system better:
- Always do your best to respond to Online Reviews as soon as possible.
- Remember to claim your review profiles and business listings (if applicable).
- Analyze and create different spaces to leave reviews – on your website, on social media channels, etc.
- You can ask your customers for feedback to work on your products or services as well as to get more and better reviews.
- From time to time share the positive reviews you’ve already got from your customers. This can inspire others to do the same.
Show your customers that you’re not afraid of the left reviews. This will show them that you really strive to provide the best service and work on improving your products.
3. Audit Your Business & Develop a Long-term Strategy
Remember when painters step back and take a look at their paintings to see what improvements can be made?
The same situation is concerning the business. Take a step back and see where and what stage your business is.
Perhaps after years of tough business activities, it’s the right time to review your current situation. Audit and analyze your strategies: perhaps there’s something to change – atmosphere, specialists, open a new branch, etc.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Alan Lakein
4. Shape Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is one of the rapidly growing marketing channels.
It’s enough to see the value that provides some of the world’s social networks such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Implementing really effective content marketing strategies can help you increase your sales, increase the authority and rankings of your business, and more.
Let’s see more reasons why you should spend your time and focus on implementing content marketing strategies:
- Content marketing helps to improve brand reputation by building trust;
- 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business, with blogging in second (27%);
- Great content impacts conversions rate;
- It enhances your social media strategy even more;
- Optimized content can help SEO and boost your website traffic;
- Finally, it’s a successful PR strategy for the products or services you provide.
Related Article: Simple Guide to Coronavirus (COVID-19) Disease
5. Consider an Outreach Strategy
Keep calm and implement as much outreach as possible.
The coronavirus situation can also help your outreach strategy to reveal the potential places to promote your business online.
Reaching out to your customers or possible partners is one of the processes that require quite a lot of time. So it’s the right time to contact them via email, SMS, Viber, social media, or other marketing channels.
New to outreach marketing and have no experience yet?
Not a problem!
Just explore this valuable video and find out how to start and write an email that won’t get ignored from Ahrefs:
Think big! Create opportunities! Don’t let your customers and partners think that your business is in a hard situation.
6. Record Various Videos: Tutorials & Guides
Videos another kind of strategy requiring much time. In some cases, it can even last for some weeks or even a month (if not more). So why lose time because of coronavirus disease and not get benefit from the occurred time gap.
Remember that videos can also be beneficial for your business, in particular, videos:
- Increase Brand Awareness;
- Help decrease the bounce rate;
- Boost Conversions and Sales;
- Help to build trust. Videos let users think that you spend time on making on them (as making videos and editing them is not easy and requires time), thus trying to provide more value to them;
- Help to improve search marketing (search engines love them);
- Helps to increases users engagement;
- Can help attract users that just hate to read texts;
- Help to enhance your mobile marketing, etc.
Let’s also explore some statistics on video marketing from Wondershare in this Video Marketing Statistics Infographic:
7. Implement Podcasting Strategy
Want to win time? Record podcasts!
Podcasting is another great strategy you can get a perk from coronavirus disease.
Today, podcasting is one of the rapidly growing assuring strategies worldwide.
According to Statista, in 2006, just 22 percent of the US adult population was aware of the term “podcast.” The situation now is far different as the figure grew up to 70 percent in 2019.
Moreover, the podcasting is now considered as one of the top industries and digital marketing trends not just in the USA but also in the whole world.
8. Don’t Forget About Your Local SEO Strategies
As you may know, local SEO is one of the SEO strategies that have some tiny specifications.
These specifications require some time and attention to address the matter properly.
For example, if you’re operating on special hours (or your business isn’t online), you can use Google My Business to let your customers know what’s changed (based on COVID-19 developments).
Insert the changes by updating your business hours or any changes (if applicable). For instance, let your customers know that because of the Coronavirus epidemy you’re closed by making Posts in your GMB account.
Also, don’t forget to recheck your contact information in case people are trying to reach you when they find out your business is closed (or to know when you’ll be open again).
9. Implement/Create Webinars
While the office is empty or you’re working from home, you can also create some webinars on various topics as from a business standpoint, it definitely has crucial importance.
Let’s just count some of them in a flash to emphasize the importance of webinars:
- Webinars position you as an expert in your field;
- They help increase awareness of your products, services, and various upcoming events;
- Webinars can help you increase sales;
- Though webinars you can communicate with your customers, clients, partners, and other people from anywhere in the world;
Finally, webinars a quite low-cost tool for your business especially during the times of long-lasting disease so they can help you build up a long-lasting relationship with your registrants as well.
In a nutshell, coronavirus can harm your business in a while, true! But if you’re smart enough you can see the other side of the coin and even get benefit from this epidemic situation.
This is what distinguishes motivated entrepreneurs and business people from the smart ones.
James is the Founder & CEO of GurusWay.com. Majoring in Business and other life-changing sectors, James covers helpful content and shares his experience with the targeted audience.