5 Smart Ideas to Increase Your Brand’s Online Presence Amid Covid-19 Outbreak
As we all know, the ominous cloud of the coronavirus has shadowed the entire planet. It is not only feigning severe effects on the health of humans, but also the businesses. The outbreak has made the unusual things “the new normal” in today’s world.
With the worldwide lockdowns, the businesses are shutting down their factories. This is done to avert the total variable expenses in times of no or fewer revenues. Its effect can be seen in the service sector as well. Organizations are also laying off or firing their many employees and switching to acquire freelance services for their projects to cut down the expenses.
In such a scenario, entrepreneurs may find themselves asking, “where can I sell my business online?” Exploring online platforms that specialize in business sales can be a viable option to connect with potential buyers and navigate the process of selling a business in the current economic landscape.
But can you achieve your targeted sales for the year 2020?
Moreover, can you minimize the adverse effects of the fiscal year 2020?
Is it possible to revive your customers to help you with sales?
The answers to such questions are yes.
But it will be possible only if you formulate an effective digital marketing policy. In this digitalization era, the integration of technological innovations has truncated the harmful effects of the pandemic.
This is because while staying at home, people are surfing for a more significant time through social media platforms. Also, for entertainment purposes and to earn revenues in their free time, they are knocking various websites’ thresholds.
So, it is time for businesses to capitalize on the opportunities that come on their way during this crisis. This will help them to be at an advantage from their competitors and augment their social networking outreach.
Fabricating a robust online presence means practicing digital marketing norms and techniques.
Such marketing aims at helping you to share content about your products and services through digital platforms. There are umpteen social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Email, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to do that.
According to research, a general human being spends more than three hours on their mobile phone. This is the time when you can reap the benefit of this opportunity by being on the screen of this human.
Claudia Cruz, the Developing Link Manager of Thrive, remarked a statement related to digital marketing during the COVID-19 outbreak. She said that this is the best time to revamp your marketing strategies and make use of the free hours to entice people towards your business.
An award-winning columnist Mark Ritson noted some similar statements in this regard. According to him, the recessionary periods are the best time for businesses to think of long-term development. They can do this through productive marketing strategies.
This is because the epidemic may have slowed down the demand, but it is not yet finished. There is latent demand, which will surge after this phase ends.
The necessary process of digital marketing consists of three steps. Almost all the businesses integrate the efforts of the best digital marketing procedures with their techniques.
3 Essentials Steps For Your Online Business
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
There is no business that can impress each individual out there in the market. This is because individuals have varied preferences, and what benefits your business may not be appropriate for them.
So, before creating an online presence, companies must determine their target audience. The target audience refers to the people who can get tantalized with your products and services. They are also capable of affording your services and can become your regular clients.
Step 2: Fabricate Compelling Content
The content used in digital media platforms is just as crucial to a business as a soul to a body. Without adequate, compelling, and intriguing content, your target audience and industry will work as the same poles of a magnet.
Thus, your content should be vibrant and quirky than competitors. Furthermore, it should align with the continually changing needs of your customers.
Also, if you can’t write, you can hire a freelance writer to do the job for you.
Step 3: Social Media Platforms
You should decide to share content only on those platforms where you have the most significant target audience. Disseminating information and wasting time and efforts on outlets where you cannot find customers is useless. This will help you to attain your aims more quickly and profitably.
Now, you have the essential cognizance of the three steps required to create your online presence.
But how can you enrich your brand’s online presence during covid times?
5 Ideas To Increase Your Brand Presence
You can do this by meeting the needs of the dynamic trends of the environment in the following ways-
#1. Customer Retention
The main aim of any business is its customer. This is because if you have customers, then only your business will survive. So, impressing the customers and paying heed to their satisfaction should be the primary goal of any employer. In these edgy times of the pandemic, you must know how to retain your customer base.
Further, your original customer base can help you to fetch new clients through word of mouth references. This is because people believe the statements of customers who have already used the product.
You can engage your customer base through various strategies. Such strategies should aim at maximizing utility for the customers. Say, for example, you are a gym owner.
In such a case, you can retain your customers by expanding the term of their subscription. Many gym owners did not consider the month of March and April for the subscriptions of their customers. This helped them to detain their original customers who were very happy with their service.
Secondly, you should also formulate another policy to withstand the lockdowns. This is because the covid crisis has created various obstacles to perform regular activities.
You cannot meet your clients face to face and conduct deals. You may even require the brick and mortar system to conduct your business.
But it is necessary to create an alternate means of revenue during such periods. Let us take the same aforementioned example of the gym.
Here, you can formulate the other means to earn income by posting online videos. Such videos can teach workout sessions to your customers.
Gusto, a payroll start-up, reaped the privileges of the increased usage of social media. The company cleared the doubts of their customers through online meetings.
In the end, you need to formulate the last strategy, which is determined for the re-opening of your business. This is because as the lockdowns ease, the consumer spending stabilizes gradually. So you need to inform your customers regarding the re-initiation of your business through digital platforms.
This will help the clients to have a link with you and know the working hours of your business. You can do this by posting on the social media platforms and website regarding your firm’s re-entry into the industry.
Customers are paying great attention to their safety. Hence create videos where you exhibit how safely you produce your products and deliver them. Secondly, update your timings on Google My Business listings.
Do not violate the social distancing norms, which will lead to a loss of clientage. You can pursue social distancing by prioritizing your customers based on several factors like loyalty and income. And email or message a particular group of customers on a specific day.
You can even entice your regular customers with online offers and discounts. But make sure that such deals will bring more revenues to your business and they should align with the needs of the target audience.
#2. A Digital Strategy
According to the Social Media Director of Thrive named Nhi Shirley, people have augmented the usage of digital marketing with their business. So, you can integrate the online tools with your business needs.
This will help you to minimize the adverse effects of the lockdowns. Tech companies across the world are doing their best to develop useful apps. Such apps include Asana, Trello, Zoom, Slack, etc.
Using such tools help you to communicate with your customers and clients in a hassle-free way. With the built-in recording features, you can listen to the customer reviews and implement them. They reduce your traveling expenses and proffer flexible schedules as well.
Besides, you can implement e-commerce with your business through useful strategies. This will help you to sell your products and services online at reasonable rates. There is a boost in the sales of online products of e-commerce sites currently.
However, there are specific attributes that you must take care of before creating your e-commerce site. First of all, your website should be compliant with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) & WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1.
This will help people with impairments to easily navigate through your website and purchase commodities. In addition, this expands your networking outreach by integrating the specially-abled customers into it.
Secondly, you should keep enough inventory in your stores. In case of any shortages, satisfy each customer by proffering them a limit on your products. For example, a customer can only purchase two products.
Thirdly, many customers are making use of e-commerce websites for the first time due to the pandemic. They are unsure about the payment methods and do not know how to use them.
Keeping this in mind, you can offer various options like online banking, credit cards, debit cards, or cash on delivery to your users. All such options will formulate a robust digital image of your brand in the target audience’s eyes.
During the time of shortage in demand, you can also build leads who will buy later from you. These people can become your regular clients.
#3. Effective Communication
These are quirky times that lead to a change in the nature of humans. But, a business can be successful by catering to the customers’ modified needs due to the dynamic trends.
Also, the companies need to communicate such changes to their customers. Such communication can entail the various procedures used to ensure social distancing and hygiene.
Though, it is crucial not to increase the panic of the people in these edgy times. So do not lower the morale of others by boasting about your techniques and strategy.
Make your message intriguing to make it count amongst the many messages in the inbox of the people. Communicate with your followers by posting regularly at a fixed time.
#4. Complete The Digital To-do List
During your hectic schedules, you must have created a digital to-do list. Such a to-do list involves all the strategies and techniques which you always wanted to integrate with your business. But, due to lack of effort, time, and funds, you must have postponed the idea.
However, now is the right time to reap the advantages of completing your digital to-do list. Such a list can include redesigning the website design and making it according to the users’ modified requirements.
Revamping your website in the best possible way will help you to build a strong online presence. This is because apart from the website’s outer appearance, the basic features and quality content attracts the customers.
Reports exhibit that approximately 48% of the people considered the website design an essential factor for a business. This is because they judge the credibility of the company through its website design. So you can improve your website design in the following ways:
Mobile Responsiveness
Your website should be responsive to mobile devices. This means that it should adapt the screen resolution of the smartphone on which it is operated.
This is because reports show that at least 49% of the people use smartphones to search through various websites and 49% of the users shop online through their phones as well.
So if your website is cent % responsive to mobile devices, the users will easily navigate it. Thus they will frequently use your website to satisfy their purposes.
Truncate The Loading Time
Optimise the loading time of your website. This is because if your website takes a long time to load, it will annoy the users, and they will leave it.
According to research, you lose 25% of your potential customers if your website takes 4 seconds to load. Hence, your website design determines the successful outreach of your business.
During this period, you can even acquire the services of a Conversion Rate Optimization specialist. Such a person performs a conversion rate optimization audit to check the Call To Actions (CTAs).
This audit helps you to know the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies and techniques. It tells you whether you can transform your leads into regular clients or not.
So utilize the time to adjust to the changing and progressive trends of the users rapidly. For example, let us say that you own a hair salon.
Due to government restrictions, you cannot open your hair salon. But you can adjust to the active trends and make videos regarding “how to cut hair at home”. This is because there are many people at home looking for such keywords.
Similarly, Google procured this opportunity to make videos on sanitization processes and how people should wash their hands.
#5. Augment Your Digital Presence
Heightening the overall social media presence will help you to instill a strong image of your brand in the audience’s mind.
You can do this through effectual Instagram marketing, email marketing, LinkedIn marketing, Facebook marketing, or Twitter marketing. Make content that is promotional and entertaining at the same time.
Additionally, you can magnify your page’s visibility on the Google search engine through effective search engine optimization techniques. According to the Search Engine Optimization Manager named Carlos Rosado, you can stay ahead of your competitors by optimizing your content daily.
To create an influential online presence, your brand should rank among the search engines. You can do this by using the search engine keywords and phrases effectively in your content without changing the sentences’ meaning. These keywords are the phrases which the users search for while looking out for something online.
Plus, it is crucial to write meta descriptions in your website pages. A meta description is a 150 to 160 characters long paragraph, which is provided on the leading search engine result pages. It gives the first impression to the users and decides whether they will search through your website or not.
In the absence of any meta description, the conclusion’s last lines are put on the search engine result pages. Such content determines the sale and revenues of your business.
You can also expand your social media outreach through PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. During the corona phase, there is a decline in the prices of advertisements. So the prices of CPC (Cost Per Click )have receded. This enables you to generate more leads at lower expenses.
Furthermore, the PPC Manager of Thrive, named John Powell, has remarked a statement in this regard. According to him, you should continue your digital marketing techniques to attract leads towards your business due to less competition during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Conclusion
As we all know, these times are bothersome, and procuring success seems like a daunting task. Nevertheless, by integrating the techniques and ideas mentioned above, you can improve your brand and proliferate its online presence. In the end, you should give your best and leave the rest.
About the Author!
Parvesh Mittal is a digital marketing and online reputation management specialist who frequently writes about related topics. You can visit his personal website, LinkedIn Profile, and follow him on Twitter/X @parveshmittal
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