How small business can revive from COVID crisis through Digital Marketing

The power of digital marketing has been well established over the past decade. In addition to engaging with a much higher number of customers, digital marketing makes it easier to monitor performance and estimate ROIs to clearly understand how leads and sales are generated. Regardless of whether you want to attract new customers or reconnect with existing ones, having a cohesive digital strategy is crucial in giving you a competitive edge over your competitors.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, however, has thrown a wrench into the works. In the past few months, a shocking 46% of businesses lost essential customers, while only 12% reported that they landed new clients. With social distancing and lockdowns becoming the norm, it is essential to harness the power of digital marketing to recover your business.

Here are a few steps you can take to revive from the COVID crisis.

Move Online

More than ever, it is vital that your business has a strong online presence in these challenging times. A strong web presence builds credibility and greatly aids in finding new customers and growing the business. Despite the widespread use of the internet, only a measly 50% of small businesses have a website. On the other hand, 90% of people use the internet to find local businesses. Moreover, having a mobile-friendly website is two times more likely to have people interact with it. Quick loading times, a responsive design, and consistent branding play a major role in keeping customers on your page.

With millions of people staying at home and going online, moving online is the best way to reach customers and obtain leads. It is estimated that by 2040, 95% of purchases made will be through online portals. Even if your business relies on having a physical store to make sales, an e-commerce platform is necessary to future-proof it.

Make Use of Affordable Paid Advertising

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is one of the most powerful channels to reach prospects from across the globe. Since late March, online traffic has increased by up to as much as 30%. Business disruptions over the past few months, however, has resulted in a decline in advertising. With online traffic increasing and fewer advertisers on the market, ads are becoming much more affordable. The average Cost Per Click or CPC has dropped anywhere from 5% to 60%, depending on the industry. On averaging across industries and globally, it is seen that paid ads have seen a 71% jump in ROI, from 31% to an incredible 53%.

You can run paid ads on the various social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, in addition to Google. Even if you don’t sell a physical product, PPC advertising is incredibly powerful and can help drive sales and leads.

Owing to the lower prices and the incredible engagement brought by PPC ads, your business is bound to have lower customer acquisition costs. Do keep in mind that large PPC campaigns can end up costing a lot, although they may lead to significantly higher sales.

Email Marketing

If you are unable to afford large-scale paid advertising, there are still numerous ways to keep your business afloat. Go through your CRM and try to find out every lead and existing customer that you have. You can now run an email campaign to leverage the email list that you have already built up to reach people. Don’t let the relationship drop off.

Three useful strategies for email marketing are:

• Reuse existing leads to engage with customers who have not purchased from your before. You can offer special prices to reel them in.
• Engage with your most valuable customers and offer special discounts to win business.
• Show empathy regarding the difficult situation.

Email marketing continues to be one of the low-cost high-return channels of digital marketing. Ensuring that you keep communication open with your leads and existing customers can go a long way in retaining them in the long run!

Social Media Reboot

In the month of March, during the height of the pandemic, Facebook saw a 70% increase in the use of various applications on its platform. Additionally, since the start of July, there are nearly 4 billion social media users across the globe. Which makes social media an incredibly powerful mode of advertising and selling your products. Some research shows that 15% of users will continue to spend more time on social media, making it all the more imperative that you reboot your social media strategies for the current times.

Revisit older strategies: Previously, certain campaigns, partnerships, or contests may not have shown the right ROI or engagement, causing you to disregard it. The current climate, however, makes it possible for you to revisit those strategies to see how well they work out.

Try new features: Facebook and Instagram have introduced a new feature known as Shops, which allows businesses to take online orders from the platform. It helps you integrate an e-commerce platform on Facebook itself, rather than having to resort to other outside services or applications.

User-generated content: With people having more time on their hands, you can encourage users to submit their own content centred around your service or product. In addition to entertaining audiences, it will also create some much-needed excitement around your brand.

Give Back To the Community

People from across the world have suffered losses due to COVID. By helping those who need it most, you will gain better exposure and get closer to your community. For instance, if you are in the clothing business, you could make face masks for individuals who are in need. If you are an insurance firm, give your customers some discounts on their policy renewals.

MailChimp, an email marketing provider, offered price relief for small businesses that were affected by the pandemic. Another huge online marketing company, Ahrefs, offered an $800 course on digital marketing for free. Despite losing a massive chunk of revenue, they will reap huge benefits in the long-term owing to the increased user adoption and leads. 

Any effort that you put into giving back to the community will undoubtedly have indirect benefits that bring your business to focus.

Final Notes

Although the future may seem bleak, there are numerous steps you can take to rebuild your business to where it was a few months back. Wisoft offers end-to-end capabilities to formulate a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to revive revenue flow and outshine the tough times stronger than ever before!

<