Meeting crisis with creativity!

What could I possibly and positively share to help independent businesses during this moment of crisis? I nervously sit battling with the thoughts of sharing my marketing tips and keeping my mouth zipped. We all have enough on our plate at the moment as it is right? 🤐

However, I shall hold onto the thought that these tips may help at least one independent business owner out there in this moment of uncertainty... and that shall be enough.

Here are my tips!

📢 The Delivery of Your Service!

How can you adapt your current services OR start offering news services?

1. Offer bespoke services via home delivery

2. Offer online tutorials on how to...cook on a budget, organise a terrarium, boost your mindset etc for a few pounds per audience member. There are many free webinar hosting platforms out there that will enable you to do this.

With more people spending time at home this is a great way of offering something different during isolation. Even if this is something you've not offered before, is there a way you can host Skype sessions offering people a unique experience or perspective into your company from the comfort of home?

3. Collaborate with other companies who ARE physically delivering if you are unable to.

On that note....

📢 Collaborate with other independent businesses!

By joining forces you...

1. Can tap into their online audience. This will help boost the awareness of your brand and may help to boost your sales.

2. Could offer joint packages of your products and/or services for both your audiences thus offering a unique deal and experience. By offering something unique people may feel more encouraged to purchase.

For example if you are a flower company and you collaborate with a restaurant offering takeaways you may be able to offer a mothers day 'food and florals hamper'!

3. May have stumbled across an interesting business adventure for the future!

📢 Build your online brand

This is your opportunity to ASSESS your brand, BUILD a community and BOOST your presence so that when the world is up and running again the first place customers go to is YOU.

A few ways you can start doing this;

1. Perform a digital marketing audit by assessing the success of your business' online presence. You can start by analysing what content performs the best with your audience. Using this information you will be more equipped to release content that truly captures your audiences attention putting you in a stronger position online.

2. Be a more active voice across the online community by authentically engaging in conversations within your industry. The stronger your community the more likely they will back you and your services and return as paying customers. Therefore use this as an opportunity to ensure the online world knows about you. The online experience is just as important as the physical one.

3. Create a backlog of content! Get creative by snapping up and planning your next 2,3,4 weeks of content for when you're back on the road. The algorithm favours consistency.

4. Think of advertising a unique experience to your audience to help build excitement over your brand during isolation. For example, offer a 1:1 services during the first week of reopening, offer a free gift for your first 20 customers, a new and fresh menu celebrating your reopening, etc.

5. Keep your audience involved in your businesses' journey even when the doors are closed. Approach this by sharing interesting stories or facts about your companies brand and mission. In hand, people will be able to learn more about your brand and may feel more inclined to return having lifted the lid on your world.

And those are just a few of my tips on meeting crisis with creativity. I hope they were able to help. (05/05/2020)