Business as usual has changed and will keep changing. The way your business responds will determine if you’ll move forward or get stuck. The way a business utilizes its marketing will be a tell tale sign on how they will recover or keep up after Covid-19.

This is the time to get strategic and leverage your business and resources to nurture leads and increase revenue. The marketing that emerges after Covid-19 will be a product of shifts in the industry as well as a changed consumer. It needs to be more personal and more digital—filling every screen/device of your life.

Here are some of the strategies your small business should consider:

1. ENGAGE – Focus on boosting lifetime value and the customer experience as well as delivering a purpose driven and meaningful brand. People buy from people—people want to be engaged, not sold to.
2. EMPATHY – Show genuine empathy, promote engagement that will unravel the shifting attitudes and consumer behaviors. Understand your customers changing needs. Don’t think like a business owner or marketer, think like the customer.
3. BE AUTHENTIC – Give back—provide as much value to customer and communities—this will help drive a long term customer loyalty. Bring back the human touch even though we are in the digital age. Make everything about people. Consumers want to know where their money is going and that those companies are doing the right thing.
4. RETHINK – Covid-19 will leave lasting changes to the consumer landscape. Businesses can’t pick up where they left off—everything is still evolving. Businesses need to monitor their communication and messaging. Businesses need to be agile enough to pivot quickly. Product offerings need to be relevant. Find technologies that can help save money, reassess the ones you actually need and which ones can help transform your business.
5. COMMUNITY – Community is king. Engage with your audience that already exists. Spend more time having conversations that posting content by participating in your community.

Considering the strategies listed above, here is a roadmap to put them into place in your business to help catapult your success.

1. INBOUND MARKETING – This task is more important than ever. It helps businesses to build relationships online and is simply the best way to convert leads into loyal customers. With lead nurturing through inbound marketing you need to listen to the needs of your audience and provide information that helps solve their problems. Examples: Blogs, social media posts, ebooks, videos, webinars.
2. LEAD GENERATION – Priorities of consumers have shifted and your marketing strategies should reflect that. Using quality content to create powerful online connections is key—humanizing your brand and speaking to customers concerns will nurture an ongoing conversation. Quarantine has taught us that online conversations can be just as meaningful as face-to-face. Brands have a wealth of resources and opportunities to connect with their communities. Online consumption is at an all-time high and its not likely to change. Businesses need to double down on engagement efforts and revisit your approach to organic traffic. The easiest/fastest way to boost organic traffic is to provide relevant content. Trying to sell your old offerings to the customers you had is a recipe for disaster. Instead create/deliver/communicate new offerings—starting with the consumers needs/hopes and desires.
3. RUN A SWOT – Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats – take a hard look at internal strengths and weaknesses while you scan the new world for opportunities and threats. Crossing your internal strengths and external opportunities could produce key leverage points. Crossing internal weaknesses with external threats could highlight business issues. Start by understanding the changes in the world and then figure out how you can best adapt. What trends are you seeing that can help transform your business?

At the end of the day, when things return to “normal”, the big key for businesses is to have a start-up mindset. Be quick to change. And if we learned anything from this Covid-19 crisis, it’s to make everything about the people. When you put people first and focus on the community you have already created, you will see things turn around.