With the world on lockdown and vulnerable people at risk, lots of us are finding ways to help our communities on a personal level – but how can we contribute on a professional level?
Digital marketing experts can be especially helpful at a time when almost all sales and communication is moving online. Here are the 4 key things your business can do to help during the COVID-19 lockdown.
1. Support your team
First and foremost, you need to ensure that your team has the support they need to cope in the current situation. This can be as simple as changing their working hours so that they can accommodate home-schooling into their day or nudging them throughout the day to make sure they take a break.
It’s easy for people to get overwhelmed with workers trapped at home with their families and concerns around health constantly on the rise so it’s important that you check in with your team regularly to ensure that you can manage their workload and provide support where needed to keep stress levels low.
2. Support your clients
Make sure that your clients are aware of how your services may be affected (or unaffected by the lockdown) and if there are any new communication methods they need to be aware of. A simple email can help them feel confident in your business and know what to expect in a time of so much uncertainty.
Lots of your clients will either be closed or affected by the closure of their own clients so they will be looking to maintain and boost their presence online in ways they’ve never had to before. Use your experience to provide recommendations to help your clients keep afloat during this time whether that’s through creating content for social media, reaching new customers on LinkedIn or helping them set up an advertising campaign with surplus budget.
With the situation changing from day to day, any content marketing has to be timely and robust as what audiences are concerned about can be vastly different from one week to the next. Try to talk to your clients at least every couple of days to ensure that they are keeping up with the news and find ways to speed up turnaround times if you’re agency isn’t creating the content – you can help by providing research and references or even by sourcing imagery to be used with the final piece.
3. Share any tips you have
We’ve all got different skillsets from time management to mindfulness to leadership so why not share your tips with people who are struggling? Use your social media platforms, email lists and internal company comms to spread blogs, videos and images with information that can help other professionals cope with working from home. While there isn’t necessarily any financial or business gain in this for you, it feels good to help someone, can strengthen your brand image and may even result in new followers.
4. Offer support to local businesses
Small B2C businesses have had to close their physical stores due to the lockdown and are now trying to find ways to keep revenue up by moving their business online. Many of these businesses won’t have a great deal of experience or expertise in digital marketing and will likely try a few channels that don’t work before finally landing on a strategy that drives awareness and sales.
While you may not earn any profit from this, you can help these small businesses by sharing some of your expertise and recommendations – what’s an hour on a phone call in the grand scheme of things? These businesses may even turn into customers or referrals once everything is back to normal.
These principles can also apply if you’re in another industry such as IT, education or telecoms – everyone is going to be struggling with different things right now so let’s all try to do our part to help where we can.
If you’re struggling with your digital marketing strategy in the current climate, feel free to get in touch with our team for support.
