If you are a small business owner and need help NOW this is for you.
We give you actionable tips and advice that you can do right away to promote your business.
No BS real actionable tips you can have your staff, friends and family do right now to help your business stand out and gain traction amid the COVID-19 outbreak. No marketing plan could have seen this coming, but you can react right now and improve your situation.
So much good and well-meaning marketing strategy and SEO advice given to businesses will have value in a few weeks or months and it is often good advice. But given the current situation, you need something that will work NOW to keep your business going.
This isn’t a magic bullet – there is no snake oil here – just some real actionable tips and marketing ideas you can use right now to help your business.
Origionally Published: 03/22/2020 @ 9:49 PM, By Trevor Stolber
1. Website Use
How website visitors interact with your website affects how it ranks. Learn how to tip user behavior in your favor and move up the rankings with a little help from friends and family.
2. Social Sharing
Social sharing is FREE visibility. The more people that share your content the more visibility your business has. Use an image, Link to the website , Use 3-5 hashtags
3. Google My Business
Google my business is a very valuable tool. Presently they are working on reduced capacity and not moderating some new reviews and other details. Fully update your GMB Page
4. Blog Posts
Share what you are doing! Many local businesses have found innovative ways to adapt to the COVID-19 situation and are employing a wide range of marketing tactics.
5. Internal Links
Internal links are often undervalued and ignored, yet they are quite powerful and you have full control over them.
6. External Links
Get links to your company wherever you can. A link with your company web site or brand name in the link text is valuable.
7. Mentions
Your business will undoubtedly have many links and citations if it has been around for a while.
8. Reviews
Follow up on all reviews with a positive note thanking the customer.
1. WEBSITE USE
How website visitors interact with your website affects how it ranks.
- Click on at least 3 pages
- Spend at least 2 minutes looking over a page
- Don’t click back
- Leave the page or tab open
You can have your staff, friends, and family search for your company or full brand name and click on your web site result in search engines. Have them click on your result and tell them to spend some time on each page, reading through the content and clicking on several of the links. Stay on a page for a couple of minutes and then clicking through to another page is valuable.
Search engines use user behavior metrics to understand how useful a site is and if it met the searcher’s goals – if it did these results tend to get pushed higher up in search results.
2. SOCIAL SHARING
Social sharing is FREE visibility. The more people that share your content the more visibility your business has.
- Use an image
- Link to the website
- Use 3-5 hashtags
- Post more frequently than you think you should
Sell a benefit and show that your business solves a problem.
The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically changed the dynamic of what consumers are looking for and what their needs and preferences are. That being said, they still need all of the services they did before, it just needs to be serviced differently.
Point out the creative ways your business is helping them.
Use an image and a link to your website. Make phone numbers and contact details prevalent in your image.
Use 3-5 relevant hashtags, one with your locality, one with your industry and one with your business brand name as well as anything else that is relevant.
Be more frequent with this than you think you need to. Even though posting a lot looks spammy to you, not everyone sees it in their news feed. Twitter especially has a very short half-life of a post, Facebook is longer and some other platforms like LinkedIn have a much longer half-life.
3. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Google my business is a very valuable tool. Presently they are working on reduced capacity and not moderating some new reviews and other details.
- Fully update your GMB Page
- Answer your phone during business hours
- Add images
- Treat as another social media channel
It is important to use Google My Business to communicate your current hours.
You may well receive a phone call from Google checking to see if you are really open. Make sure you are able to answer the phone during normal business hours or your listing may get changes automatically.
Use Google My Business as another social media channel and post with images frequently. This listing can show up directly in the search results and is much more prominent than a typical result. Having an active and updated Google My Business Profile will help your business stand out in the crowd.
LINKING
Linking ….
Linking isn’t an immediate hit, but it is very valuable so any of the following that you can do will also help out a lot and put your business in a better position for the future when we come out the other side of this situation.
Links are still a major part of how search engine algorithms work so it’s very important to concentrate on them.
4. BLOG POSTS
Share what you are doing in response to COVID-19 in a blog post
Sharing what you are doing with your customer base in a blog post or with your email list will help to get the message out that you are open for business. Many local businesses have found innovative ways to adapt to the COVID-19 situation and are employing a wide range of marketing tactics.
Make sure that whatever solution you implement is fully compliant with public health regulations and follows the appropriate control and prevention CDC advice.
If you are a small business owner blog posts and other forms of content marketing coupled with social media marketing are some of the main low-cost marketing tools available.
5. INTERNAL LINKS
Internal links are often undervalued and ignored, yet they are quite powerful and you have full control over them. You can do a site search such as site:mydomain.com “my target keyword” and find words on your site that mention a keyword you are interested in ranking for.
Visit the page and change the text to a link to the most appropriate page. Do this for a few keywords on a few pages (think how Wikipedia does internal linking to relevant topics) but don’t go overboard.
6. EXTERNAL LINKS
Get links to your company wherever you can. A link with your company web site or brand name in the link text is valuable.
This will not have an immediate effect but if there is an opportunity for your business to get a link through PR or local news media covering your area or industry and you can show some value you should be able to ask for and receive a link.
7. MENTIONS AND CITATIONS
Your business will undoubtedly have many links and citations if it has been around for a while. Reach out to everywhere your site is mentioned and ask the web site owner to make it a link to your site.
Also, ask them to highlight your business.
8. REVIEWS
Follow up on all reviews with a positive note thanking the customer. Also, make sure to follow up with any positive reviews were a star rating was not given.
RESOURCES
There have also been a a large number of resources and initiatives on this topic. Here is a list. If you know of any other resources or topics that should go here let us know in the contact section below.
