The world of digital marketing has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Digital marketing is basically a way to reach customers, consumers and potential audience by utilizing various methods such as internet, social media, gadgets and devices such as tablets, phones, laptops and search engines among many others. Digital marketing includes covers a vast variety of stuff such as website designing, content writing, social media marketing, SEO and PPC. Even though most of the work in digital marketing is done from one place or can be practiced at one’s own place as well, most companies, especially multinational ones, allocate a percentage of their budget for travel, trade show sponsorship and attendance. However, the recent outbreak of coronavirus has threatened all these activities and is forcing companies to wonder whether to continue their activities or to stop them for the time being.
How To Handle Your Online Business During Coronavirus outbreak?
The coronavirus is now a pandemic and has been dominating world headlines for a while now. In the current situation, brand marketers are now forced to make some very important decisions. Which are:
- How to respond to this crisis?
- How to bring changes to the current strategies by noticing consumer behavior?
- Whether to respond at all or to stop business for a while?
While there is no correct answer to these questions, we can however, advise you on how to move forward and that is, do NOT stop digital marketing during thus outbreak? Why, you ask? Here are a few reasons why!
Why You Should Persist With Digital Services & Marketing Campaigns?
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It will only make things harder!
Yes, whenever you check the news, all you see is the new of coronavirus spreading and a panicky situation throughout the world. However, this is not the time to panic. We have noticed that many businesses are shutting down their marketing operations or slowing them down. However, this is a rash decision, one which will only make things harder. If you stop operations, don’t you think it will be all the more hard to bounce back again? Not to mention the huge losses you will incur in the present. The recovery from this will be extremely hard and troublesome and we definitely advise against this.
Basically, do not take long term decisions based on panicky situations or with an emotional mindset. The economy is already taking a hit and you by doing this won’t be doing it any favor. Try to reduce the strain on it and your social systems as much as possible so that you are able to do your business and your country some good.
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More people will lose their jobs.
As mentioned above, the economy is already under a lot of strain. Air travel is being banned by many countries and flights have been cancelled to prevent the spread of this virus. Schools and colleges have been closed until further notice. All these changes mean that many people are unemployed and will continue to be as more and more countries employ stricter reforms to prevent the spread of this deadly virus.
What your business can do at your end is keep it running so that less people suffer than already are.
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Many businesses will take an emotional decision to close down.
Whether this decision is correct for them or not, many businesses will choose to do this, giving you an advantage if you do not follow in their footsteps. Although, you cannot expand at this time, but maintaining your marketing operations at this time will strengthen your image in the market right now and for the future, increasing your chances of generating greater revenue and more loyal customers.
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It is a time for improvement
With many businesses slowing or shutting down their marketing operations, the air of competition is almost eliminated. This means that you have a chance implement changes that you always wanted to but never had time before. For example, optimize your website for voice search or make it more mobile friendly. If you haven’t before, start keeping an inventory of your assets or maintain an excel sheet of all your important stuff or budget. Understand your customer bases, think up effective strategies for social media marketing. Basically, improve your website and your business for the future when hopefully, better days will come and everything will resume again. Then, you will not have the time for all this so utilize it to the maximum.
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You have a chance to develop better relationships with potential customers
Whether you want to generate new or greater leads, or get more customers, now is the chance. You can use this time to turn your potential customers into paying customers. Learn more about your customer base. What do they want? How they react to what? What are their needs? How do they react to different information and products?
If you take this time to research thoroughly about all these questions and try to find their answers, it gives you a chance to come up with more effective and better strategies to make them interested in and loyal to your business.
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Greater success post Corona virus
Even if you do not see any immediate results, you will definitely see that not shutting down your digital marketing operations was beneficial for you in the long term. But Coronavirus will go away soon. As we have all see, China has already dealt with the problem effectively and is seeing a return to its normal operations. When this time comes for your country, would you want to be starting over? No, right? Hence, to be ahead of the competition and to not let all your previous efforts go to waste, continue with your work so that you do not suffer losses or disappointment after all this is over. Once the air clears out more people will come running to hire digital marketers for new website designs, SEO and social media marketing while you will be sitting at the very top already.
If people notice your dedication to your business, country and employees at this hour of need, it is highly likely that you will make loyal customers for life and take your business to greater heights. So, please take our advice and do not shut down your marketing operations. Trust us, you will achieve great results. We hope you will make the right choice for your business. Stay safe!