Member-only story
Three Marketing Tips for Small Businesses During the Pandemic
The virus pandemic has mercilessly swept across the globe, taking lives, ruining people’s health, and wrecking thousands of businesses in the process. The brutal Covid-19 virus has not only claimed people’s health but also prevented the economy from working normally. There are, however, some ways for your small business to hang on — even grow — until the pandemic is under control.
Let’s look at three tips that can help your small business survive and even thrive during this perilous time.
- Offer more than a laundry list of what services you offer.
The concept of inbound marketing has gained traction with thousands of businesses in the past decade. First, let’s be clear what “inbound” is, with this description from our friends at Hubspot:
Inbound marketing is an approach focused on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful — not interruptive. With inbound marketing, potential customers find you through channels like blogs, search engines, and social media. Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing does not need to fight for potential customers’ attention. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, inbound marketing attracts qualified prospects and builds trust and credibility for your business.
This means your social media, website, and advertising should offer more than just “buy from us” messages. You should provide useful information that people are seeking. For example, if you’re an appliance repair service in a smaller city like Kanata, you can offer tips on ways to repair, repurpose, or recycle an appliance. Certainly, you are presenting your business as a buying option, but a blog article or Facebook post detailing just when a refrigerator needs to be repaired, rather than replaced, is useful to consumers.
- Seek strategic partners.
There is strength in numbers. A great way to increase word of mouth is to align your business with vendors or other firms you work with regularly. My firm, for example, is a strategic partner with an accounting firm. We are listed on their website as a public relations resource, along with their other strategic partners, including an insurer, a…
