Creative ways to approaching your business in the current situation.
In many ways, here at API Studios and many businesses that have the opportunity are and should be an embodiment of remote work already. In ordinary times, communities enjoy an engagement that allows them to have freedom over their time and location, but in these uncertain times, it also provides a safer environment to work in.
Despite the fact of the virus outbreak, we should look at the other side of it and realise that mostly for businesses it is also an opportunity to gain awareness, build up their client base and reach out to people.
Straight forward, we at API Studios rely and choose to focus on email marketing. It is the most effective way to stay in touch with our clients and new prospects to bring out the best of marketing with a focus on help, value and brand awareness.
Here are some creative way that we use and advice anyone that might need to get a glimpse of idea and help on how to approach your business using digital channels in the current situation but not only.
Remote work option
With plenty of people already working remotely, there are a lot of free tools business owners can utilize so that teams can stay in touch and keep working even if they aren’t in the same place.
Implement a remote work policy that covers when you expect your team to be online or available, how to communicate (via email, Slack, or video call, for instance), and what deliverables each team member is responsible for completing.
Transparency with your customers
Everyone is facing this crisis together, so be transparent about what your business is going through. Customers can empathize with brands facing a crisis, as long as you communicate with them properly.
Shift strategy to online
Take your ways to digital platforms to engage customers virtually and increase online sales. Find ways to keep your employees earning a paycheck by selling on a website and social media, putting your email list to good use or using a video tool to reach new leads.
Showing your website some Love
Fix and put in place your site. If it’s not perfect, spend some time looking on things to solve and make your site the lead magnet it needs to be. Take over every space of it and make it your most important asset that can generate you more.
Considering an outreach strategy
Whether or not reaching out to customers during this period is appropriate depends entirely on your type of business, your existing relationship with customers, and the purpose of the communication.
Customers need to hear from you regularly by email, SMS messaging or social media. Don’t let that relationship drop off. What you can do is get creative and think of how you can offer reassurance, social connection, or tangible assistance.
Let customers know how your business is changing or adapting to protect them and your employees. Encourage conversation and be forthcoming in answering questions or concerns they may have.
Using the right email
You don’t want to appear like you are taking advantage of a bad situation, there are ways you can help your customers by thinking of new ways engage and help them in a difficult time.
Many companies are offering services for free or with discounts for the next several months to help customers get through the financial uncertainty we are facing. Others are posting free content and access to other resources on websites.
It’s understood that some customers simply won’t have money to spend in the coming months, those that do will have different needs than they did before and you have to be ready to address them, whatever that means to your business.
This outbreak forces us to rethink about a lot of the ways we run our businesses, our society and our lives. If you keep your customer at the center of all your decisions, even in the midst of such a crisis, you will be setting the foundation for a successful business whenever we return to normal.
Best practices on how to use digital channels to keep brands alive during a crisis.
Escalate and respond
One of the key ingredients to a healthy approach towards a crisis is definitely speed of reaction and a clear, honest, transparent answer. Turning online complaints into a boosted online reputation and some positive publicity has never been easier, actually.
However, to make this work, here are a couple of aspects to bear in mind:
- Choose the most appropriate channel(s) to communicate with your audience
- React quickly. Research has shown that the success of online customer service is often determined by speed of reaction, more than anything else
- Assess the seriousness of the issue and respond to anyone directly affected by the crisis first
- Provide constructive responses to questions, requests or complaints and prove that you care
- Be genuine, adopt a human approach and show your commitment to solve your customers’ problems
- Consider using specialist support to prepare, identify and deal with the most sensitive situations
Using email marketing
Should you pause promotional emails?
Well, it is different from business to business. Here the key is to look at those promotional emails and see if they make sense in the context of the crisis, if you can offer value or not. If your promotional emails are sensitive to the situation and provide real value for people dealing with the global pandemic, then keep sending them.
Take a look at all of your promotional emails through that lens and then decide which to pause, and which to keep sending. The best way is by providing real value for subscribers and displaying your own compassion for their situation, don’t just send emails that do nothing or without providing actual help or resources to subscribers.
The right content strategy across channels, not just email
Regardless the channel you’re using, you should strive to understand the problems of your customers and doing what you can to relieve it. It can take lot of different forms, but we believe it’s the lens with which we should view all content strategy, inside of email and out.
Use the power of email marketing across all marketing channels because email marketing is our and should be your most measurable channel. Email marketers have access to invaluable data with the power to inform and optimize marketing activities across any organization.
Make the most out of your social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and any other platform you may use. Utilizing Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will help your organization gear up to use even newer technology that is coming out.
Simply put, our digital marketing strategy is the specific steps and actions you can take to achieve goals. There are several types of digital marketing. Here are the most common we use:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Viral marketing
Using content to leverage your business
Create valuable content for your readers. A consistently published stream of reliable, interesting content published on your website can convince prospects to make a decision and put their trust in your brand.
Write more about your service or products. While blog posts and similar kinds of content are usually aimed at educating the audience, other kinds of copy on your website should be written specifically to market your services and products.
Create ebooks for users to download. eBooks in particular can cement your brand’s reputation as a thought leader. While giving it in exchange of an email address, you can build up your email list as well as drive sales of both products and services.
How we as an expert could help businesses during this health crisis.
Becoming increasingly clear that businesses around the world are impacted by the changes imposed because of the virus outbreak, we resolve business needs remotely. We’ve been thinking about ways in which we can help small and medium-sized businesses manage in this new environment and we are happy to help in these uncertain times.
We at API Studios offer total free consultancy and a lowered pricing model on all of our services to help businesses in these hard times. We do our best to help businesses and can increase sales, engagement, conversions and more through our web design and email marketing strategies.
We all find ourselves in a new business reality, quarantined in our homes or with major travel restrictions and hope that by offering help and resources it will create more opportunities for more people, to take their business online, to learn new skills, or to start the business they have been dreaming of.
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