The world we live in is facing a massive shift in priorities as well as protocol due to the deadly coronavirus outbreak that has made the world come to a standstill. With many businesses having to temporarily close down their doors and others working in a limited capacity, the future of the economic world hangs in the balance as there seems no near end in sight to this pandemic. During all of this, businesses are turning to digital marketing even more than ever. Digital marketing agencies all over the world are coming up with strategies on how best to serve their clients during this time that will give a long term benefit to them in the post-COVID-19 world.
Here are some ways businesses can make use of digital marketing during this time –
In times of uncertainty, your customers want to hear from you more than ever. If your business is operating with limited resources, communicate that with your customers through a blog post or email marketing. Let them know that you are still operational and how they can contact you with their issues during this time. You can also share important offers with them to help them out during this time.
GMB updates are crucial for any local SEO of a business. There are many businesses that have temporarily closed. It is important to update your business page as temporarily closed so that you do not continue to get calls from customers with orders. If you are operational but your timings have changed, it is very important to make these changes in your GMB page so that you don’t leave your customers in a confusion.
There is a good chance that the competitors that have been ahead in the game from you would have paused their digital marketing activities during this time. By keeping your SEO and social media activities going, you can create a gap between you and them in the search rankings during this time period. You can check organic search trends to see which terms are being searched the most and can create content around that to gain more organic traffic.
Businesses should never underestimate the power of social media. In tough times like these, social media presence is especially important to let your customers know you are there and what you are doing. For example, if you are doing any sort of charity work or helping out your staff that cannot work, there is no shame in sharing that with your followers on social media to grow your goodwill. The same goes for just giving out socially conscious messages to your followers about keeping themselves safe during this time.
This is also a good time to focus on your website for any technical issues and to do a check of all the content assets you have. During the day to day operations, your website’s health, as well as maintenance, can take a back seat. Now that you have the time for it, do a thorough audit of your website for any technical SEO and non-SEO issues. Do a speed test to ensure the loading time of your pages is good. Make sure to update all relevant schema markup to go with any changes in your business. A content audit will help you know which piece of content needs to be updated and which is performing best for you.
This is also a good time to create new relevant content for your website. This is the time when people in lockdown across the world will look for interest articles in their niche to read about to grow their knowledge. Show your industry expertise to those readers by creating helpful content for them that will draw traffic. The content published during this time can bring you great benefits in months to come when the world begins to reach normally hopefully.
Regardless of the conditions today, there are still customers out there who are looking for products or services that you may be offering. While other traditional marketing techniques have been halted, digital marketing can still continue to rope in those customers for you. This will keep the business moving in a positive direction that will help you keep your staff paid. Identify which digital marketing agency you have gained the best results from in the past and capitalize on them.
As the world has now entered the fourth month of this global pandemic, the future holds a lot of uncertainties for businesses and customers alike. While we are all keeping a positive and hopeful attitude, continuing the digital marketing efforts for businesses might be what makes the difference between which businesses would survive and thrive after the dust settles.
