The #Covid19lockdown has swiped through the business environment like a hurricane. Events? Cancelled. Business venues? Closed. People are asked to stay at home to avoid further contamination. From freelancers to service providers and manufacturers everyone is trying to find new ways to move forward and try to stay relevant to their audience while in lockdown.
The current reality of business during lockdown is a gloomy one. The Covid-19 crisis calls for EMERGENCY actions from brands.
If you are a business owner, then you should use this time to get to know your audience better and engage with them. Because even in times of crisis businesses CANNOT neglect their loyal customers.
Long-term relationships with your clients are a strong strategy for any business. Because people buy from people they trust. And even now, when you know that there's little chance of getting new sales from your customers, you don't want to waste months or even years of hard work by neglecting them.
Here are some of our tips on how to engage your audience in times of crisis:
1. Simplify your offer (niche down)
Now it's NOT the time to have an extensive menu of products/services. Because in these uncertain times, customers are less focused on products they don't need. So cut the fluff, remove the whipped cream and forget about the add-ons.
Your product needs to be simple and useful right now. Does it save your customer money? or does it make them money? If the answer is no for both, then you may need to rethink your offer.
Ex. For restaurants, consider offering a standardised takeaway menu that you can mass-produce & deliver to your customers. By removing customisation from your food menu, you'll be able to scale your business while reducing your cost.
Malatome offers a “quarantine food” delivery menu that includes a standard serving of noodles + your own choice of sauce in a jar.
2. Launch an E-book
With self-isolation outlook widening, your customers now have more time to read and develop their skills online.
If you have a marketable skill this is the time to take action and convert it into $$$. Not only this, but an E-book is an evergreen piece of content. It has the potential to generate income, attract and nurture new leads for your business for days, months and years to come.
Quick tip: in order to increase your chances of success, do a survey among your audience on Facebook and Instagram, asking them directly what would they be interested to learn about from you.
3. Create a "How To" video series on IGTV
You can use your time in isolation to create a series of short educational videos to teach your social media audience a new skill.
It doesn't have to be directly related to your business - even though that would help.
Here's how to create an IGTV series.
It can be anything from make-up tutorials, how to clean your closet, furniture restoration, cooking recipes, writing a storybook etc.
Remember to share something that is relatable to your audience and start conversations with them.
4. Transform your in-person workshop into an online course
If the current social distancing guidelines don't allow you to proceed with your in-person workshop you should consider teaching online.
There are plenty of platforms that allow you to publish your course online (for free) like Udemy, Teachable or Skillshare.
You can even use a private Facebook group or create a YouTube channel to share your training modules/live workshops.
What if your typical content doesn’t attract people? What should you post during this crisis?
Our advice is to focus on publishing content that would help your audience either save money or make money.
5. Start a blog for your business
Business blogging is not something new. In fact, it’s proven that businesses with a blog attract 434% more traffic to their website.
So if you already have a website that isn’t able to bring in targeted leads for your business, you can focus on optimising it using business blogging.
Use this quarantine time to research, write & publish educational articles for your blog that will help attract targetted visitors. And don’t forget to add a subscribe form on your blog to collect the email addresses of your visitors.
6. Use Instagram Stories to engage daily with your audience
Stories are the best platform for customer engagement. They are easy to record, fun and super engaging to watch compared to reading a feed post.
We've written a guide on how to create engaging Instagram Stories so we suggest you have a read over it.
They're also the most used Instagram feature so you know the majority of your followers are more likely to see the content you publish on stories than on your feed.
7. Use teleconferencing to offer 1:1 or small group consults
If you haven't started using teleconferencing, now it's the perfect time to hop on this digital trend.
With most schools now putting out online content & webinars, you can steal their tools and use them in your business. How exactly? If you're offering 1:1 or small group consulting you can use Zoom to teach your private students a variety of lessons.
You can use it to teach virtual singing lessons, guitar lessons, language lessons, painting lessons, yoga lessons or any type of consultation.
The bottom line is that the coronavirus crisis will not make all business & trade disappear for good. Instead, any crisis offers a chance for businesses to find new ways of doing things, and moving towards an online dependency.
We want to hear from you: what changes are you making to your business to survive the coronavirus crisis?