Reopening and adjusting to the “new normal” will involve researching, communicating and executing plans to pivoting strategically. Following are steps small businesses can take:
Lay Out Your Marketing Strategy
Update your marketing strategy to reflect your customers’ current needs:
• Assess how your competitors are handling marketing and gauge how customers are reacting.
• Address the current reality your customers are facing.
• Communicate important reopening announcements, changes and information.
• Stay on top of your website, blog, email lists, social media channels, etc., to deliver consistent messages about your business plans.
Strengthen SEO Strategies
Clean up areas of your site and prioritize initiatives:
• In-Depth Technical Site Audit: Tackle technical issues with your site.
• Site Migrations and Redesigns: Although it takes time to recover search traffic/rankings while Google indexes your “new” pages, it puts you in a great position with a new, improved site.
• Site Speed Improvements: Improving site speed is a well-known ranking factor and is even more important in the mobile-first indexing era.
• Site Tools, Features, and Functionality: Focus on projects — improve ecommerce functionality, enhance design, etc. — which will pay dividends in the future.
Be prepared with new content:
• Customer Support and FAQ Content: Assess how your business appears in search results and ensure that your content satisfies the immediate needs of customers.
• Warranties, Return Policies and Protection Plans: Create content explaining how customers are protected – consider adding a section to your return policy addressing COVID-19.
• Safety and Cleanliness: Update your business practices in response to the new normal and educate your customers on how you’re keeping them safe.
• Fill Your Site’s Content Gaps: Address content gaps on your site and fill them.
Remain cohesive and stay aligned:
• Daily Standups for Your Team: Meet for 15 minutes each day to discuss what you finished yesterday, today’s priorities, and what may be blocking progress.
• Stay on Track with Your Content Calendar: Keep on track with an updated content calendar.
• Daily Tracking on New Content: Track metrics of new content to make sure it is gaining traction.
• Monitor COVID-19 Content from Your Competitors: Track the new terms related to COVID-19 and the market share for those keywords to stay one step ahead of competitors.
Small businesses need to plan and understand changes to be made and any new growth opportunities that may exist in a post-pandemic world.
Source: USChamber.com, Nicole Fallon; conductor.com, Joe Taylor