How to turn the lockdown time into an opportunity for your business

Sweet tips from Ally: Instead of focusing on your temporarily closed business or your revenue significantly reduced, try to see this crisis as a window of opportunity!

The current global crisis has slowed down economies worldwide. Larger firms may have the financial reserves to stay afloat through the storm, but the disruption in cash flows can be more critical for SMEs. While governmental and private organizations worldwide are stepping up to relieve the pressure, there are many things you can do to help your business survive – and even thrive – during this unprecedented crisis.

In particular, the shift from physical to digital commerce provides both a challenge and an opportunity for small business owners. Now is the time to focus on upgrading your IT infrastructure, improving your website’s functionality, and maybe emphasizing online customer service. And while these investments will pay off immediately in the form of higher online revenues, the actual upside is the dividends they will continue to make you money well into the future.

Update your website and improve your promotional material

During your regular business, it can be hard to find the time to update your website with new images, updated information and content, and perhaps even a design refresh. So, the time is now!

And what about giving your brochures and business cards a refresh, too? When business resumes, you’ll be ready to hit the tradeshows, letterbox drops, and other marketing efforts with lots of updated materials - and stand out from your competitors.

Invest in online advertising

With most consumers staying at home, traffic on social media platforms has increased tremendously for the time being. This increase, and the corresponding decrease in-store traffic, provides an exciting opportunity for small businesses. Online advertising is more crucial than ever, and it has the chance to be seen by more customers than ever before. Now is the perfect time to focus on SEO, SEM, or social media marketing, fine-tuning ad campaign strategies, and improving ad targeting to maximize returns.

Improve your customer service

Maintaining open communication lines and ensuring customer satisfaction is also more critical than ever, so it is beneficial for you to focus on improving your business’s online customer support system. Customers won’t soon forget the quality of service they received during the crisis.
So while staying in close contact with your customers and making them feel heard may not generate revenue directly, it will help solidify your customer base and help contribute to sales growth in the future.

Find new business opportunities

It is also time for business development. For instance, have you explored the opportunities offered by online marketplaces to sell your products? B2B companies can benefit from trading platforms such as the Export Portal to find new, reliable business partners in this time of crisis.

So, spending this hard time on your business is a great way to be ready for when the doors open and start to get back to normal. And while “normal” might be different from how things were before the coronavirus pandemic, you will be prepared.