On March 11, 2020, the coronavirus was announced to be a global pandemic.
The very next day, businesses in North America began to adjust their practices, letting customers know they were taking extra precautions to ensure that their storefronts were safe to enter in light of the crisis.
Only a few days later, though, many businesses either decided or were mandated to shut their brick and mortar doors immediately, leaving the fate of many business owners in the hands of their ability to create a strong social media strategy.
At Relevantly, we know that the coronavirus has had severe impacts on foot traffic and sales to business owners around the globe, and we want to equip you to establish a social media strategy that will allow your business to be profitable throughout covid-19 and beyond.
Wondering where to start? Keep on reading!
Put Yourself In Front of Your Target Audience
Without traffic to your physical location, it’s important that you’re driving traffic to your digital location — including both your website and your social media platforms.
Your social media platform becomes the new “entryway” for your business, and your ability to keep an exciting and active presence during covid-19 is going to be important. Your customers are spending more time than ever before browsing on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and this is the perfect opportunity to reach them with great content!
Consider using a social media calendar to plan out content for each week, including details about your product or service, details about who your staff are, or even general information that would be relevant or interesting to your followers. For example, beauty brand Sephora features their products on a weekly basis as well as sharing industry insights and tips and tricks for beauty gurus with varying experience.
Find your niche and spend time creating content that will keep you top of mind for your customers while they’re scrolling everyday. if you have a website where your product or service is available for purchase, use this strategy as an avenue to point users to your website so that they can still make purchases until your brick and mortar location re-opens.
2. Consider Paid Ads
You might be thinking, “spend money on paid ads when revenue is taking a hit? No way!”
But, hear me out on this.
According to Harvard Business Review, companies that refocus their marketing budget instead of cutting it during recessions are typically the ones that come out on top when all is said and done.
Right now, your target market is at home, sitting in front of their screens, and many of your competitors are likely not advertising in order to cut back on costs.
Taking this time to actually invest into paid ads gives you the opportunity to take the lost market share from those who are currently pulling back.
On average, cost-per-click on platforms like Facebook and Google Analytics are seeing declines and are expected to continue decreasing, which means that you can make your budget go further by running ads to your audience that no one else is running.
The result? Customers that remain engaged to your brand during this time and are more likely to stick with it when coronavirus dies down.
At Relevantly, we are a team of marketing experts specializing in running high-converting Facebook and Instagram ads for small businesses. If you’re looking to promote your product or service in this season, we’d love to help you design a campaign that will produce results! Click here to speak to our team today.
3. Invest in Digital
If there’s anything that coronavirus has made obvious for is bigger owners, it’s that having a strong digital presence is absolutely critical. With the extra time and staff-power that you have available, re-focus your energy into checking things off of that “digital to-do list” you’ve been writing for years.
Here are some of the things you can do to improve your online presence:
Create or update your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts
Consider branching out into new platforms like TikTok
Create a Google My Business account
Start a blog on your website
Optimize your website for mobile
Update or refresh your website content
Conduct an SEO audit on your website
Install a chatbot
Create an automated email workflow
Work The Wait
At this point, no one knows how long the season of quarantine during coronavirus is going to last — however, we do know that the businesses who choose to pivot quickly and adjust their marketing strategies are the ones who are going to come out on top. Leveraging social media during covid-19 and investing in your digital presence is one of the best ways to ensure that your customers will stay engaged, even from home.
Don’t sit back and waste this time, use it to work on the things that will set you up for success in the future.
If you’re looking for help in customizing a coronavirus social media strategy for your business, we’d love to help. Reach out to our team at Relevantly and we’ll work with you to establish a plan of action that will keep conversions coming!
