According to a survey conducted by data firm Dun & Bradstreet, 82 percent of businesses have experienced a negative impact on business. Source – TOI
Over the past 14 months, India is one of the worst hit countries in the world due to Covid 19 & continues to still struggle with the new lockdown & phase 2 spread of the virus.
There are definitely lots of negatives of the pandemic & lockdown and it is also bound for many businesses especially small firms to be heavily affected due to impact on the economic front as the demand disappears & there is huge dip in income generation.
But having seen all the negatives, as an entrepreneur it is always important to have the right attitude towards the problem & turn the problems into stepping stones of success, because that’s what we have been doing all through our journey isn’t it?
Pandemic & lockdown means more free time for all of us. Hence in this blog, I will guide you with some practical steps that can be followed which can ensure that when the market reopens you & your business are a step ahead of everyone else with your preparations which will definitely benefit in long run.
Give a good look at your business website
Constant business calls, new product developments, that big client meeting, market strategy & team development; if you are an entrepreneur running a small business all these terms above will sound very familiar to you. It’s quite natural that you tend to ignore your own website & brand in the daily hassles of running the business. But now is the right time that you open your business & start having a good look at it. Trust me; even we built this website where you are reading this article during the pandemic.
To get a good idea of how your website should look or how the structure & content on your website should be, go to Google & type the best keywords that you would like your website to rank on when your customers search. For example, we would like to rank on the keyword Digital Marketing Agency in Mumbai, SEO Agency in Mumbai etc. So, I would go on Google & check the websites that are already ranking on the keywords that we would want to rank for to get a fair bit of idea about what my website is lacking compared to the Google leaders & work on my website accordingly.
Develop your website for SEO
The reason why I mentioned SEO right after website development is that the ON page SEO of the website can be executed during the website development phase itself. The way your website is optimized has a huge effect on ranking for the keywords. Hence it is again recommended that while you go through the competitor websites who are ranking for your keywords, you also go through their content & ON page SEO optimization.
Easier said than done, it may not be easy for a non technical person to understand the depth of optimization on a competitor’s website. Hence, you can hire a SEO agency to do the work for you or you can use a few tools like Screaming Frog, SEO Site Checkup, Deadlink Checker to get the understanding of basic optimization.
You can also contact us to get a detailed Free SEO Audit of your website from our SEO experts.
Trust us, optimizing your website for SEO during pandemic will help you get the ranking results while the market reopens & once your business is up & running, you will start getting genuine inquiries which will give your business extra push to recover quickly from the hit of pandemic & build your inquiry funnel for the long term.
Start speaking to your existing customers
Getting new customers in your business is very important for the growth, but it is more important to maintain your existing customer base to strengthen the core of the business. You can use extra time in pandemic to start connecting again with your existing customers, seek feedback on your service, understand what are the new developments they are doing in their business, their strategy to hit the market post pandemic & many more.
You might even consider refunding the money to the clients who had prepaid membership of your service. This might dig a small hole in your pocket temporarily but, the money you give will return to you tenfold when everything stabilizes & your loyal customers are ready to buy again. Not just that, it will build a long term goodwill & loyalty towards your brand.
Set up your business on automation at no cost
One huge change that you can bring to your business during the pandemic is setting automation to your business so that as soon as everything reopens & when you start reworking from your office things start working more smoothly than it did before. But what exactly do I mean by automation?
Maintain your inquiry sheet online, create a work tracker for your team online, develop that excel sheet to track your growth month by month, develop that tracker which helps you track your expenses every month & many more.
Now you may think that all of these may cost a big chunk of money but to your happiness the answer is big NO. In fact all of these will cost you $0. Yes, we ourselves developed all of these documents for free using the free tool of Google Sheets & not only that we can edit these documents online whenever we want even with our phone & collaborate with our team on every document.
Developing this system has helped us ease our work, track the business better & understand important analytics for the business to make important decisions. You can get in touch with us if you want us to help you develop these systems for free.
Develop long lasting loyalty with your team
While Covid 19 brought many news of companies laying off their employees all around the world (which they couldn’t help it with eventually), but trust me you are not going to get a better opportunity than this to earn the loyalty of your important team.
Every company’s success depends a lot on the team of people who bring skills, ideas & energy to the table. I always believe that a smart, diverse & loyal team is a company’s greatest asset and in simple words they deserve to be helped & protected during this down time.
Not just that, you can even use this time to connect better with your team, improve man management & work on upskilling your team to prepare them for a bigger journey in the long term. Believe me, an investment made today in your team can serve your business right for the years to come.
I hope that this blog will be helpful to you & your business. Scale Delight will be more than happy to assist you in the journey to stabilise & grow your business during pandemic.
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