Looking After Your Business During Covid-19

In the current climate your employees, clients and the community’s wellbeing is absolutely paramount, there is nothing more important. However, life does still go on and businesses are still running. Covid-19 has caused drastic issues worldwide with the majority of countries having at least one case now, it has caused an international standstill. Here at Frogspark we’re all still hard at work but at home now, if you have any worries or questions don’t hesitate to call us on 01332 493766 or get in touch here.

The current situation is causing massive issues for many industries most notably restaurants, bars, airlines, hotels and other small businesses in general. It’s a tough time for everyone but we have to power through and come out on top of it. For all of us digital marketers, what can we do in this period?

SEO

I think in times like this it’s important for all of us digital marketers out there to remember that SEO takes time. If you focus your time in this period of unease on optimising your online presence we can expect to see a boost in your businesses numbers later on this year. With a lot of companies temporarily shutting their doors in this period of unease, it leaves the possibility for you to capitalise on it. With countries like China and South Korea managing to greatly reduce their number of cases in just a couple of months, we could be hoping to see the climate of the country picking up by mid-summer.  If you stop your SEO efforts now you could be expecting to see your page dropping off the front page completely, so you could be suffering from Covid-19 now, but it could get even worse when you’re no longer pulling in new leads. It can seem scary now but it’s so important that you are thinking long-term. It takes several months before optimization reaches its peak and campaigns are requiring constant monitoring and maintenance.

If you are currently working on an SEO campaign then stopping now or letting it do its thing could cause you to start dropping off for keywords that you’re ranking for. With no definite time period for the virus if you’re still not back to normal practice within 6 months keywords could be off the first page and you’re back to the beginning or more likely further down than where you began. It’s important that you’re leading your business through this crisis with longterm thinking. Don’t be making quick decisions based on fear, think of what you can do at the moment to best support yourselves and your clients.

Pivoting strategies

When it comes to success in marketing a lot of it relies on how quickly a business is able to react and pivot their strategies around trends in real-time. Just how CEO’s adjusting business travel policies and IT professionals are preparing for an influx of work-from-home traffic, you should be preparing to change your marketing strategy. There have been numerous international disruptions in the running of businesses from search volume fluctuations to supply chain interruptions. Some initial precautions search engine marketers should take to ward off any unwarranted increases in search traffic can include:

• Set up automated reporting dashboards to be reviewing your traffic and spend
• Adding “coronavirus”, “virus” and “Covid-19” as negatives to your accounts
  • Google has been blocking ads that are trying to capitalise off of coronavirus, so this shouldn’t be a necessary action but nevertheless we recommend this.
• Consider applying a negative bid modifier to heavily affected areas depending on product or service availability, as it is likely that you will be not using your budget as effectively as possible.

Content

If you’re now working from home now is the perfect time for all things content. Something like a content audit takes a lot of time and expertise but during this slow period, you could improve your content with an audit. We’d suggest making a note of all of the pieces of content that you have put out and then evaluating them there might be an opportunity to update it with fresh content, optimize it with new CTAs and keywords, adding internal links or repromoting your content. It’s not only the perfect time to update old content but also put out some new great content.

Some of the best pieces of content you could be looking at putting out are videos and podcasts, they’re brilliant ways to target longtail keywords, get into the featured snippets and appear in YouTube searches. Videos are great for providing versatile content because you’re able to break it down and use it elsewhere, for example embedding it into a blog post, taking screenshots to use for your social media or even taking quotes from the video and using these in upcoming blogs or social media posts. In this slower period, let’s start trying some new mediums, get creative it will greatly benefit you and your company.

Looking after your clients and employees

This is a scary time for everyone, so it’s important that your business is communicating fully with your employees and clients alike. When it comes to clients it’s important that you’re not pretending like nothing has changed but do help them with their concerns and queries. The best idea here is sending out frequent communication through emails, social media and updating your business hours and availability. Where necessary, hosting phone calls and teleconferences. There are so many things you can do for your customers if your business is online including email marketing newsletters, social media updates and ensuring that your clients are able to contact any which way. If you can provide this support for them during this period and continue to work at such a high standard you’re very likely to keep them as loyal customers in the future.

As for your employees, it’s key that you’re keeping them in the loop and letting them know you’re there to support them. If it’s possible you should be offering a work-from-home program, implementing guidelines on sterilization and social distancing as well as using reliable sources to determine a timeline, and checking in regularly on your employees both their wellbeing and how they are getting on with their work.

If you’re worried about Covid-19 and how it is going to affect your business then check out the Government’s website for all the latest information. If you’d like help with your SEO efforts then don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of experts.