EPISODE 24 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: 5 THINGS TO DO DURING THE CORONAVIRUS DOWNTURN TO BOOST YOUR BUSINESS

Sonya McIntyre-Reid:

When a downturn hits, the first thing businesses usually cut is marketing. Rather than cutting activity altogether, it's important to take this as an opportunity to pivot your marketing activities. Think about it. For the first time, we are potentially facing an environment where people are in lockdown completely. Across the world, offices are shutting hospitality venues are limited to just take away only. And public transport is like a ghost town with people staying at home and practicing social distancing.

For us marketers, this leaves just one avenue to reach consumers, digitally. The businesses that survive this, the ones that are pivoting to offer online services in the form of some sort of eCommerce offering. I've been amazed at the businesses across the last week that have mobilized so rapidly. Setting up online stores, webinars, online, personal training, amazing deals and sales. Who else's inbox is getting flooded right down with e-commerce styles? Yes, consumer spending is tightened, but some industries are booming. Look at businesses such as Hello Fresh and Who Gives a Crap Toilet Paper. Now is their moment to shine.

A friend of mine runs ads for an organic butcher that does online orders and delivery. She spent $120 on ads and sold over $15,000 worth of meat. Insane. So here's my advice to you to prepare your marketing activity during this coronavirus downturn. Number one, look at your current business model and determine how you can pivot. Can you offer online classes and webinars? Can you set up a quick online store with Shopify? Can you sign up to a meal delivery platform such as Menulog or Uber Eats, if you're in the hospitality industry. This is time to look at opportunities rather than limitations. If there is no way for you to offer your service or product in any way online, focus on adding value and building your audience. This is not going to last forever. Those who persevere and produce regular high value content to continue engaging and building that audience are the ones that are going to boom post-corona. And remember building your email list is key.

If you're experiencing a very quiet period new business, use this time as an opportunity to build your marketing assets. Start that podcast you've been talking about for two years. Finally, build that membership site. I'm talking to myself here. This is the opportunity you've been waiting for to finally get to work on your business rather than in it. Embrace it and make the most of it. Number three, make sure you're focusing on your existing clientele. Be 100% customer focused. Keep them happy, be accommodating, and work hard to retain your existing client base. Think about sending out personalized target messages to each of your existing customers, checking on how they're doing, keep that relationship going, and if clients do drop off, part amicably. This is a challenging time for everyone and once this passes, there'll be an opportunity to rekindle your relationship. Don't burn bridges.

Number four, let's get visible, visible. Can't believe I just sung that. She will sing that in the head like I did. So the mere exposure effect is the marketing phenomenon by which consumers develop a preference for your products or services merely because they are familiar with them. Now is the time to explore low cost techniques that will keep your brand visible in front of potential clients on a steady basis. It may feel counterintuitive, but setting aside an advertising budget for keeping your brand visible will deliver longterm benefits. Focus on creating high quality content that is going to get shared and reduce your budget for generating low value, low impact content. Cut any ad spend that is going out to print or radio mediums and switch your spending towards brand awareness campaigns on social media to stay top of mind. Update your evergreen content. Your business has an archive of perennially relevant, interesting content that does not become dated and is still a value to your customers and the search engines.

Revisit your content, update it, give it a spring clean with the objective of improving your rankings in the search engines. I've actually just done this for our free resources, including a digital marketing jargonbuster. Our six essential tools to market a business online course and I've updated four templates for you to get more reviews online. Something else to think about as well, is social proof and posting positive stories about your business. Revisit how using case studies, maybe you've never had the time to actually put case studies together. Go reach out to your clients existing and past and get recommendations from reviews. So have a look at every touch point with your marketing at the moment and take the time to waive this content through your website and share it actively on social media. We've actually done, as a side note, a mini-tech campaign just recently with a beauty salon and we've sent out a message via messenger, Facebook messenger chat bot, asking people to support them and leave review. And it's amazing. The second that message went out, we received hundreds of reviews. So why aren't you doing this for your business?

Number five, use this time as an opportunity to get all of your ducks in a row. So here's my list that I've been handing out to my clients. One, make sure you Google business listing is up to date, up-skill, check out Udemi or our free trainings, head to kissmarketing.com.au/free to get your hands on those. Make sure Google analytics is set up correctly. Make sure your Facebook pixel is installed on your website and tracking events that you need to be tracking such as contact forms that are being filled out or phone numbers that are being clicked. Do a social media audit, ensure all of your profiles are up to date. Freshen up your cover images on these social media profiles.

Seriously, guys, when was the last time you updated your LinkedIn cover image? When was the last time you logged into LinkedIn? Go through your website with a fine tooth comb, update any old content, add new content, and think about the user experience and how people are moving through your website. So many times I do a strategy session with businesses and they go, "Oh, I've got a landing page for this or this is how you contact me." And I look at their website and it's like this is not obvious straight away. You're seeing it because you've built the site, but think about someone that has just landed on your site for the first time ever. And if you're not too sure how to get into this state of mind, there are free tools that you can explore that actually show you how people are moving through your site through heat mapping. So one of them that I've used is Hotjar, I think they have a free trial so you can get some data across two weeks. So go install that, see what people are doing on your website visually.

And set up an email list or software and start building it. So for me, if you had just starting out, Mailchimp is great, make sure you're setting Mailchimp up properly though. So a lot of people create five or six different lists. You just need one master list and then you need to be using tags and segments within that list to break people down into the audiences that you need to be sending out emails to. Personally at the moment, I'm using active campaign. Pay a bomb for it, but I absolutely love it. But email software as email software. If you're just doing basic newsletters, MailChimp is more than enough. All right guys, thanks so much for listening. If you've got any questions, feel free to slide into my DMs, Instagram's the best place to reach us. I can't talk today can I? Stumbled over my words so many times. Hard to get back into the swing of things with this podcast. So my Instagram handle is kiss_marketing.

You've been listening to the Marketing Solutions Podcast with Sonya McIntyre-Reid. Don't forget to get your hands on our awesome freebies that will get you on your way to marketing success. Head to kissmarketing.com.au/free.