You did not see this coming!
The Covid-19 pandemic and associated crisis have brought a lot of businesses to a grinding halt.
You didn’t expect this to happen. How could you?
This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. No business in the last 100 years was built keeping a pandemic in mind.
So, first of all, stop blaming yourself for not having anticipated this.
Secondly, the businesses that are either surviving or thriving right now, aren’t doing so because they had better vision. They just happened to be at the right place at the right time.
STOP thinking that you should have done something else.
The list of businesses (or rather industries) that are out of work right now is endless and if you are in it, you have company; a lot of it.
Stop thinking about what it is that you could have done to prevent this from happening and start thinking about what it is that you can do today.
And this is exactly the kind of spirit that made you want to become a business owner, right?
Take a moment to relax and think of your personal life. While business is personal to the owner, there are things that everyone holds more dearly like family, health, and affording a comfortable life with all the basic necessities, a savings fund for a rainy day like this.
So, take a deep breath and clear your mind of some negative thoughts.
Now, let’s talk about what you can do today.
Through this article, I can only speak to 2 types of people:
Business owners who are selling something through their website.
Business owners who rely on getting leads through their website.
If you’re among the majority of business owners, your business is either completely or significantly down. While you’re restlessly waiting for your business to get back to normal and then slowly make up for the lost sales, you’re also wondering, how can I utilize this time to empower my business for the future?
If you’re honest, you know that running the day-to-day operations, you have ignored quite a few aspects of your business; whether it is cleaning up your accounts, investing in website improvements, or finally creating that dreaded social media presence everyone’s always talking about. You’re also going to try to look for alternative sources of revenue to make the future of your business corona-proof, take more parts of your business online (if it’s not already so), and prepare to go in top performance mode when you’re allowed to, etc.
This time is precious. Use it to do things you have put on the back burner.
- Get a website built
- Revamp your branding
- Set up social media
- Competitor research
- Optimization of website
So, let’s dig into some of the reasons why you’ve not been selling as much as you could.
Your market doesn’t know about you, and they can’t discover you. You are not a major household name and because of that, they can’t find you or shop with you. This is a huge hurdle, even if your products are better and different from your competitors.
Whenever someone wants to buy what you’re selling, they’re going to the competition. Either because the competition is a well-known name or they are better at marketing themselves. This could be the case if they have deep pockets or have strong connections which help with the word of mouth.
Now that you know why it’s time to introspect where you stand with respect to competition and create a proper plan.
If you’ve bought anything recently, you must know how it goes. You realize you need something and then you Google. It. You talk to your friends and family for recommendations on whom to go for, and then you Google some more. You start getting ads for the product you’ve searched for, and if you’re remotely impressed with either of the brands, you Google it again.
You google to find solutions to your problems, you google to define your problems, you google questions, you google symptoms, you google to find help around you, you google to understand about stuff, you google google google, ….
You get my point.
While people are googling all around the world, every second of every day about everything under the sun, Google has made a rich collection of searches related to almost every industry.
You know it’s true. Getting on the 1st page of Google will really help with visibility and that way you won’t have to pay for ads every time you want sales. You’ve probably heard the case for ranking on Google (SEO) before but let me tell you why it matters so much more right now.
You’ve paused your Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads, right? Because what’s the point? There are either issues with delivery or your supply chain is affected. So, in order to not spoil the customer experience, you have paused your sales temporarily. Or even if not, it’s slowed down.
But being the busy bee you are, you cannot sit idle while things around you are falling apart. So, you get to work.
This is a GREAT time to work on your visibility on Google
- It is not going to help you convert right away but will help with 6-12 months down the line with ROIs as high as 400%
- It’s a time-intensive investment, and time is what you have right now. USE IT
- Most of the websites don’t invest in SEO, so it is another thing you can get ahead of your competitors
- Your website is never going to work alone, how much you’ve invested in getting it made. In fact, some of the swanky websites might be doing you more harm than good. it’s a good idea to get that checked, right?
- Since you’re not a big brand and are not going to become one overnight, another way to gain trust is to come up in Google searches. People trust Google.
I am going to assume that you are like me when it comes to business, and don’t want to waste a single opportunity to succeed. So, why will you lose out on such an important one?
READY TO TALK ABOUT WHAT SEO CAN DO FOR YOU? Request for a free customized SEO strategy today.