This pandemic certainly forced many businesses to navigate through uncharted waters. No matter what type of company you’re running, creating new marketing strategies is highly essential, especially at this time. It can indeed be hard to adjust the strategies you’ve worked on before. But if you want your business to survive these hard times, you will have to pivot your messaging and tactics.
Now’s the time to focus on your business strategy’s marketing elements more than ever. And although most of the small businesses are quite focused on cutting costs, coming up with a solid plan should be a top priority.
So as the need to adapt is highly critical right now, here are five ways to pivot your marketing strategy during the new normal and, eventually, help your business to survive.
1. Talk to your team
One of the most important things that a business owner should know is that your employees are not just staff. They are also a great resource for marketing ideas. Talk to them and be honest about the current challenges the company is facing. Need to do some staff changes? Or perhaps you’ve got other plans?
You can discuss the immediate changes or safety precautions to be implemented, as well as plans to pivot business models or processes. Ask for ideas from your team, such as recommendations for new business opportunities to take on, products to offer, or strategies to try.
If necessary, you can also ask for their availability to take on other roles or work flexibly or for more hours. Moreover, check if they have other talents or expertise that you might be able to use to pivot your business or marketing strategies. They might be good with storytelling, collaboration, messaging, distribution, visualization, or analysis. All these marketing skills are definitely a great way for your business to create great content for your customers.
2. Connect more with customers
For the past several months, the business field quickly started to shift from networking events and in-person sales talks to webinars and video conferencing. And as a business owner, it’s imperative that you ensure you won’t lose any of your current customers. Now more than ever, it’s important that you focus on their needs—listen and adapt.
Give time to know the current feelings, interests, and needs of your customers. This way, you can get an idea of what you should do to make their buying experience as stress free and convenient as possible.
The first thing to note is that if you want to deepen your connection with current customers right now, you’ll have to do so in creative ways. Here are some useful tips to consider:
- Take advantage of client feedback surveys either via social channels or email. Reach out and get invaluable insights regarding your products and services that you might have missed.
- Offer a new product or service that is currently in demand or trend. You can go for niche deals that have gone viral. Do your research and make the most out of it.
- Check your data, including information about your marketing, sales, and customers. See what past strategies worked and what didn’t, then produce a profile of your top customers.
- Use customer stories or reviews and share them on your social media profiles to grow engagement, audience, and trust.
Keep in mind that loyal customers are literally your brand ambassadors. Think of them as champions for your business. Concentrate on maintaining a strong relationship with them via social media or email newsletters. Let them know you care, and you won’t lose their trust, especially in this difficult time.
3. Focus on the digital way
If your company has an online presence or you perform most operations virtually, then you already have an advantage. But if you are still relying on that underused site or that local brick-and-mortar store, you’ll have to do some upgrades.
Create a virtual store where customers can avail of your offers or reach out to you immediately. For this, you can consider using e-commerce platforms from third-party vendors. There’s Alibaba, which is a digital marketplace offering e-commerce tools for businesses struggling during this pandemic. Or you can try platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify to sell your products online.
Another thing to consider is localizing online presence. Before trying to compete globally, make sure to focus on local first. Set up or update your website by displaying your products and promoting them on social media. Create relevant videos, blogs, or other digital content that will interest your current customers or attract new ones.
What’s more, don’t forget to boost your digital marketing efforts like SEO, email marketing, or even paid ads. Do you have the marketing budget but not the expertise to do all this? You can always consider hiring social media or marketing professionals like Feedback Systems to help boost your online visibility.
4. Consider collaboration
Collaboration can point to different things such as exploring synergies, new marketing ideas, or partnerships. With this, you can have access to new markets or new customers.
That being said, take time to connect with a neighboring business or other marketer on social media. But before reaching out to one of them, there are some questions that you need to ask yourself. How will that partner help leverage your sales? Is there a chance you can bundle your offers together? Can you offer something in exchange? Keep in mind that great and true collaborations should always be a win-win.
To make this happen, listed below are other tips that you can take into account:
- Partner up with other brands for cross-promotion. They could be a nonprofit organization, a noncompetitor in the same niche, or a local business.
- Reach out to the right kind of influencer. Make sure they can create meaningful and quality content, have a great number of engaged viewers, and have viewership that suits your brand or target market.
- Go to networking events, virtual or not. This is an excellent opportunity for you to easily find people to collaborate with. This is also a great chance to reconsider your ideas and be inspired.
- Consider guest posting. You can find numerous sites out there who allow guest posts, which will earn you a link back to your website. Or you can do it the other way around and accept guest posters. This is even great for SEO, which gives you a better chance of increasing rankings in Google’s search engine results pages.
5. Adapt and diversify
Great companies are always built during difficult times. And while the impact of this current pandemic is saddening for many, sometimes you just have to embrace the pivot.
One of the main reasons for diversifying is to actually avoid insurmountable difficulties with the cash flow and be able to maintain the revenue stream. Maybe you can try doing things you didn’t consider before all this, such as releasing new products or broadening your services.
To help you with this, we’ve also listed a few more tips on how you can still generate great revenue at this time of crisis.
- Make the most of your resources to develop a new service offering or product. You can discover new ways to use your existing machinery and even create new processes too. Or you can even market these or existing products through online channels as well.
- Expand your business operating hours. You can consider providing 24/7 customer service either through your online site or phone. This helps you serve more customers and establish loyalty even with all the restrictions or limitations during this pandemic.
- You can create live online tutorials or classes or videos. You can talk about skills or interests relevant to your business, whether they’re beauty tips, home workouts, accounting, and more.
- Provide care packages for your customers. This is not just about bundling products up, but also about offering a new experience to your business. For instance, a lot of restaurants now are turning into some kind of a market. They’re now selling meal kits, frozen meals, dry goods, or grocery items that can be ordered online. Even hardware stores these days now sell DIY gardening or project kits that their customers can do while staying at home.
Nevertheless, make sure to do what’s best for your business. You can make those fundamental, strategic changes because your processes have been entirely transformed or developed diversification strategies as an emergency response to this current pandemic.
Remember that in times like these, you should not focus on what you cannot control. Instead, focus on what you can do and achieve. Create better opportunities for your brand and implement those new revenue strategies, and your business will continue to grow.
In case you need assistance in navigating your business or executing new marketing strategies through COVID-19, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Feedback Systems. We offer lead generation services that can help your business develop new marketing plans, stay in touch with your customers, promote your products, and continuously gain revenue.
Now’s the time to focus on your business strategy’s marketing elements more than ever. And although most of the small businesses are quite focused on cutting costs, coming up with a solid plan should be a top priority.
So as the need to adapt is highly critical right now, here are five ways to pivot your marketing strategy during the new normal, and eventually, help your business to survive.
1. Talk to your team
One of the most important things that a business owner should know is that your employees are not just staff. They are also a great resource for marketing ideas. Talk to them and be honest about the current challenges the company is facing. Need to do some staff changes? Or, perhaps you got other plans?
You can discuss the immediate changes or safety precautions to be implemented, as well as plans to pivot business models or processes. Ask for ideas from your team such as recommendations for new business opportunities to take on, products to offer, or strategies to try.
If necessary, you can also ask for their availability to take on other roles or work flexibly or for more hours. Moreover, check if they have other talents or expertise that you might be able to use to pivot your business or marketing strategies. They might be good with storytelling, collaboration, messaging, distribution, visualization, or analysis. All these marketing skills are definitely a great way for your business to create great content for your customers.
2. Connect more with customers
For the past several months, the business field quickly started to shift from networking events and in-person sales talks to webinars and video conferencing. And as a business owner, it’s imperative that you ensure you won’t lose any of your current customers. Now more than ever, it’s important that you focus on their needs – listen and adapt.
Give time to know the current feeling, interests, and needs of your customers. This way, you can get an idea of what you should do to make their buying experience as stress-free and convenient as possible.
The first thing to note is that if you want to deepen your connection with current customers right now, you’ll have to do so in creative ways. Here are some useful tips to consider:
- Take advantage of client feedback surveys either via social channels or email. Reach out and get invaluable insights regarding your products and services that you might have missed.
- Offer a new product or service that is currently in demand or trend. You can go for niche deals that have gone viral. Do your research and make the most out of it.
- Check your data including information about your marketing, sales, as well as customers. See what past strategies worked and what didn’t, then produce a profile of your top customers.
- Use customer stories or reviews and share them on your social media profiles to grow engagement, audience, and trust.
Keep in mind that loyal customers are literally your brand ambassadors. Think of them as champions for your business. Concentrate on maintaining a strong relationship with them may it be via social media or email newsletters. Let them know you care, and you won’t lose their trust, especially at this difficult time.
3. Focus on the digital way
If your company has an online presence or you perform most operations virtually, then you already got an advantage. But if you are still relying on that underused site or that local brick-and-mortar store, you’ll have to do some upgrades.
Create a virtual store where customers can avail of your offers or reach out to you immediately. For this, you can consider using eCommerce platforms from third-party vendors. There’s Alibaba, which is a digital marketplace offering eCommerce tools for businesses struggling during this pandemic. Or, you can try platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify to sell your products online.
Another thing to consider is localizing online presence. Before trying to compete globally, make sure to focus on local first. Set up or update your website by displaying your products and promoting them on social media. Create relevant videos, blogs or other digital content that will interest your current customers or attract new ones.
What’s more, don’t forget to boost your digital marketing efforts like considering doing SEO, email marketing, or even paid ads. You got the marketing budget but have no expertise to do all this? You can always consider hiring social media or marketing professionals like Feedback Systems to help boost your online visibility.
4. Consider collaboration
Collaboration can point to different things such as exploring synergies, new marketing ideas, or obviously, partnerships. With this, you can have access to new markets or new customers.
That being said, take time to connect with a neighboring business or other marketers on social media. But before reaching out to one of them, there are some questions that you need to ask yourself first. How will that partner help leverage your sales? Is there a chance you can bundle your offers together? Can you offer something in exchange? Keep in mind that great and true collaborations should always be a win-win.
To make this happen, listed below are other tips that you can take into account:
- Partner up with other brands for cross-promotion. They could be a non-profit organization, a non-competitor in the same niche, or a local business.
- Reach out to the right kind of influencer. Make sure they can create meaningful and quality content, have a great number of engaged viewers, and viewership that suits your brand or target market.
- Go to networking events, virtual or not. This is an excellent opportunity for you to easily find people to collaborate with. This is also a great chance to reconsider your ideas and be inspired.
- Consider guest posting. You can find numerous sites out there who allow guest posts, which will earn you a link back to your website. Or, you can do it the other way around and accept guest posters. This is even great for SEO, which gives you a better chance of increasing rankings in Google’s search engine results pages.
5. Adapt and diversify
Great companies are always built during difficult times. And while the impact of this current pandemic is saddening for many, sometimes you just have to embrace the pivot.
One of the main reasons for diversifying is to actually avoid insurmountable difficulties with the cash flow and be able to maintain the revenue stream. Maybe you can try doing things you didn’t consider before all this such as releasing new products or broadening your services.
To help you with this, we’ve also listed a few more tips on how you can still generate great revenue at this time of crisis.
- Make the most of your resources to develop a new service offering or product. You can discover new ways to use your existing machinery and even create new process too. Or, you can even market these or existing products through online channels as well.
- Expand your business operating hours. You can consider providing 24/7 customer service either through your online site or phone. This helps you serve more customers and establish loyalty even with all the restrictions or limitations during this pandemic.
- You can create live online tutorials or classes or create videos. You can talk about skills or interests relevant to your business, whether it’s beauty tips, home workouts, accounting, and more.
- Provide care packages for your customers. This is not just about bundling products up, but also about offering a new experience to your business. For instance, a lot of restaurants now are turning into some kind of a market. They’re now selling meal kits, frozen meals, dry goods, or grocery items that can be ordered online. Even hardware stores these days now sell DIY gardening or project kits that their customers can do while staying at home.
Nevertheless, make sure to do what’s best for your business. You can either make those fundamental strategic changes because your processes have been entirely transformed or developed such diversification strategies as an emergency response to this current pandemic.
Remember that in times like these, you should not focus on what you cannot control. Instead, focus on what you can do and achieve. Create better opportunities for your brand and implement those new revenue strategies, and your business will continue to grow.
In case you need assistance in navigating your business or executing new marketing strategies through COVID-19, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Feedback Systems. We offer lead generation services that can help your business develop new marketing plans, stay in touch with your customers, promote your products, and continuously gain revenue.
