6 Digital Marketing Strategies For SMBs During COVID-19

The outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, is having a tremendous impact on businesses and the economy worldwide. During this time, it’s key to stay calm and safe to explore all options for your business.

I’m going to discuss the six different digital marketing strategies that you can focus on during this COVID-19 outbreak for your business -

• Google My Business
• Online Reputation Management
• FAQ Schema
• Budget Optimization
• Google Ads Campaigns
• Social Media

But before that -

Stay safe.

Keep yourself, your family, and all who you care about safe.

And -

Stay informed.

There is a lot of misinformation floating around at present, so it’s crucial - more than ever - that we all stay informed by consuming information from trusted sources. Don’t panic.

Now back to business -

6 digital marketing strategies for businesses negatively affected by coronavirus:

These are hazardous times; everyone is anxious, but the worst thing you can do is react to everything out of sheer panic, including your digital marketing strategy. Hold patience on your search engine marketing effort can help you continue generating revenue, which is especially essential during potential economic downtime.

Here are some digital marketing strategies to help your business -

1. Update your Google My Business

Whether your business has closed during this period or remains open, it’s vital that you update your Google My Business profile. Google has announced that Maps will display if a business is temporarily closed.

Currently, the only way to mark your business as temporarily closed is to contact Google My Business Support. However, Google’s CEO, Mr. Sundar Pichai said, “In the coming days, we’ll make it possible for businesses to easily mark themselves as ‘temporarily closed’ using Google My Business.”

Google is proactively advising businesses to update their Google My Business listing, especially if they’ve been affected by COVID-19. Google has released information on how to update business information in a bid to help users with the most accurate information.

It’s important for local businesses to update their Google My Business page, especially now when “nearby” or “near me” searches are on the rise.

2. Focus on online reputation management

Businesses keep continuing to exploit blogs or other mediums to publish content relevant to their industry trends and growth as a means to update their customers. This will transmit reassurance to your customers and let them know what you’re doing to help them. Which in turn helps you maintain the online reputation of your business even in a crisis situation.

3. Use FAQ schema

People are using search engines like Google more than ever for finding answers to their questions. Ensure that your website content answers the questions that searchers are searching for. Think about implementing FAQ schema to your website pages correctly so you have an opportunity to appear higher on the search engine results page (SERP), which in turn, can increase your traffic and click-through rate (CTR).

4. Budget optimization

Buyer behavior has certainly changed a lot over the last few weeks and months, so you must be ready to shuffle your marketing budget to react to these changes smartly. This is especially important for businesses that run PPC ads. Now is the time to scrutinize the amount spend on online marketing to find out the most profitable channel.

Spend your total budget wisely, especially if you have multiple lead generation processes for your business. And, if you can afford it, invest in profitable plans only and utilize selected ways for the marketing effort.

5. Run Google Ads campaigns

This is one of the best ways even now, to reach customers who intend to buy. You can also use the ads to reach your target audience on social media.

As we can expect fluctuation in demand for certain products and services, now is the time to use online advertising more intelligently to turn the tide towards your business. Of course, depending on your product/service and/or industry, you’ll need to be mindful of running campaigns.

6. Use social media

Similar to Google My Business, use your business’s social media accounts to keep your consumers informed about every initiative that you take to make their lives easier during the crisis. You can create content related to your business operations.

In conclusion

Obviously, this is a creepy time, but you need to think about the effects that could have on your business if you stop all of your digital marketing efforts.

I cheer you to stay active online, answer your customer’s queries, and let them know that you’re still there - at their service.

We will get through this together. Stay safe.