Navigating your marketing during the coronavirus

Here are a few helpful tips to navigate your marketing during this time…

If your eCommerce website design is backed up by a physical store, you may have had to implement changes to your opening hours or swap to only accepting contactless payments. Restaurants for example may no longer be taking reservations for dining in but, you could be accepting take away orders instead over the phone and on your site. However you have been impacted, use your local SEO assets to communicate these adjustments to your clients to minimise disruption.

Your Google My Business account is very useful here – you can log in to your profile and immediately change your opening hours to reflect your new timetable and adjust key information such as payment methods accepted and services being offered. Use Posts too in order to explain to customers any changes and how you can continue to work with them during this time. 

The changes should show up almost right away, giving anyone searching for you on Google all of the pertinent information they need. 

If you have had to make changes to your service, share a blog post on your site detailing what’s different. This gives your clients peace of mind and acts as a useful reference which can be shared with other customers. 

If nothing much has changed for you – for example if you are an online retailer and you’re still able to get items shipped out to clients – it’s also important that this is communicated so you don’t lose any potential sales. 

Keeping a regular presence on your social media channels right now is important. In addition to sharing any changes and updates to normal day-to-day services, consider how you can serve your community at this time.

Many brands have taken to their social profiles to ask who they can help their audiences through issues such as self-quarantine and isolation. Many people will be feeling anxious and worried now so ask how you can help them and what kind of content they want to see from you. Even if your business operations have been impacted, it’s very likely that you’ll still be able to engage with your audience on social in a meaningful way. If you’re a fitness brand for example, could you share at home workouts on your social media profiles or host a question and answer session with an industry expert?

If you’re a food brand or a restaurant, why not collate some useful information such as store cupboard recipes, new ways to make food they have ordered from your store go further or ingredients to boost the immune system. 

If you’re a retailer of arts and crafts, how about hosting a communal paint-along which everyone can join live? 

Most of us won’t have faced anything like this before but, that doesn’t mean that your marketing activity must cease. Quite the opposite in fact. This is a time to consider how you can serve and help your audience with resources and helpful information to use at this time.