With the worldwide crisis experienced over the past few months, everyone’s income has been in constant jeopardy, so they’ve been spending less. But the optimism that things will get better motivates businesses to keep running – and find ways to recover after taking damage.
During the lockdown, one big task you could have started working on is digital (internet) marketing, particularly SEO. Taking a look at dealing with such questions as, Where does your site rank in search engines? and How good are you at getting user traffic and converting it to leads?
The fact of the matter is, emerging from the lockdown is a turning point for many a business – an opportunity to display your marketing prowess and strengthen your bond with your customers.
And the other half of your recovery plan? That’s what we are going to explore in detail. What can you do to reverse the damage caused by the lockdown? Let’s find out.
1. Adapt to Customers’ Lockdown Behavior & Assume It’s Here to Stay
People split into two big categories during the crisis:
Those who stay at home.
Essential workers who put themselves in danger.
Just from this description, you can get the gist of what each of these two types of people may need. And with a detailed customer persona, you can gain even more insight into their wants.
One after another, countries are lifting their lockdown restrictions. However, it’s too early to relax.
Play it safe and assume the lockdown isn’t ending anytime soon (no matter how depressing it may sound).
Now, how is this going to affect your work?
If you run an ecommerce store, keep your stock full at all times. Almost everyone shops online now, so if you don’t watch your stock, you’ll risk running out.
If your job involves teaching your customers things (e.g., a yoga instructor), you might need equipment to record videos and software to edit them. And you will need to upload them on YouTube or another site of your choice.
If it’s simply talking to customers on the phone or Skype, you will have the easiest time of all – just make sure all the necessary devices are on.
To summarize: have everything you need to do your job at home. If you are still lacking something, get it at once.
The fact of the matter is, emerging from the lockdown is a turning point for many a business – an opportunity to display your marketing prowess and strengthen your bond with your customers.
2. Reassess Your Spending Strategy
How does one avoid going bankrupt when the quarantine put a damper on everyone’s business? One way is to rethink how you manage your budget. If you didn’t do this when the lockdown began, you should really do it now!
How can you cut your costs and spend less than usual?
Spend less on advertisements.
Double down on free promotions.
Stop activities that don’t result in profits.
Reuse old, successful content that can still be useful.
Another way is to make yourself less expensive (and more appealing) to customers. Discounts and special offers are even more effective than ever, thanks to literally everyone trying to save money. In fact, so many businesses have been offering discounts, customers expect them from everybody now.
3. Make Your Website Run Like Clockwork
From a technical standpoint, a good online service translates to a fast-loading website where nothing breaks while customers are using it.
There are two things you can do right now to improve your user experience (UX):
Find & Fix Technical Errors
There is no such thing as a minor site error. Even a single broken image can render a page useless if you were using that image to show your product. Make it a habit to run technical audits at least once a week and immediately fix any errors you find.
Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Phones are competing with desktop PCs for user traffic as fiercely as ever, so your website must be fully operational on all types of platforms. The best practices include implementing a responsive design (Google has helpful guidelines for that) and maxing out your loading speed.
Discounts and special offers are now more effective than ever, thanks to literally everyone trying to save money.
4. Make the Customer Experience on Your Site Easier for New Users
The user experience is more than just how well a site works. The most important factor of all is the money-making factor: the quality of customer service.
The closer your users are to the bottom of the sales funnel, the better for you -- so your site needs to be accommodating towards that kind of visitor.
What do potential customers need from your site?
Intuitive design. Divide your content into clearly defined sections. Users must be able to tell at a glance which part means what and where to find everything they need.
Quick answers. Write detailed descriptions of your products and provide the means to get more information: a live chat, a chatbot, and FAQ.
Multiple products to choose from. Customers like to have options. Be sure to display other products on pages in a “people also buy” section.
Your contact information. Display it on your homepage or a separate one.
Honest opinions about you. This is where customer reviews and testimonials come in. Make it easy for users to leave their feedback and encourage the action.
Simple check-out process. The less clicking and scrolling it takes, the better.
5. Increase Your Click-Through Rates
Do you know what guarantees user visits even better than top organic search rankings? Making your search snippets attractive to your target audience.
Usually, the secret to improving your click-through rates is using attention-grabbing text and visuals. Different areas do have a bit of nuance, though.
Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): Be mindful of the character limits in your search snippets’ titles, descriptions, and URLs. Use schema markup on your pages to add new elements to your snippets. Also, try to optimize your pages to appear in featured snippets.
Social media: Text-only posts are boring! Add images and videos to them. Also, make users engage with your updates (by asking questions or provoking discussions) and reply to their comments.
Your own site: Use a heat map generator to see what users do on your pages. If you find out they don’t scroll down far enough or ignore your CTAs, it could mean you need to redesign your pages. Additionally, improving the ranking positions of your “money” pages will be a tremendous help in gaining more clicks.
A must-do when you work on your CTRs: check the pages ranking on Google’s first SERP for your chosen keywords and give them a thorough analysis, including their search snippets. If you can figure out what makes them rank so well, you can come up with ways to one-up them.
If you're considering different strategies to optimize your business's emergence from the lockdown -- we can help. Please schedule a complimentary appointment with us and let's discuss your next steps.
Comments