The advantage of having a superb network of experts (and friends) in my field is that there is little point in me telling you what to do – they have already said it.
There are quite a lot of posts about what to be doing, now, for your business. In my opinion, it comes down to:
- Fixing your website + SEO
- Looking at your marketing strategy
- Looking at analytics and trends
- Starting something big
So here, from my network of wonderful people are the more in-depth how-tos from some amazing experts.
Marketing checklist for the Lockdown:
Let’s start with a really great little list, 44 Marketing Actions To Consider During This Crisis, Brought to you by Walker Riley.
And from We are All Marketing another roundup of things to do in their post Working from home for Marketing Teams which is in turn a follow on from Digital Marketing Tricks for Growth.
Fix your SEO
Leading on from the above, SEO is of key importance right now as the shortcuts of advertising are not there: SEO Advantages over PPC. And while competitors are also laying low its the critical time to Preserve your SEO Benefits you have worked hard to get. It’s also the time for proper experimentation and thinking on sales funnels and audience participation.
The links above are from those wonderful folk at WooRank.com, who know their onions and have great automatic tools. You can also check out some really good lessons by the two big boys of SEO Neil Patel and Brian Dean / Backlinko both of who have some really great tips and advice. Or just call me (of course) for a down to earth, speedy evaluation.
Look at your stats – who are your audience?
Every day should be a school day, so why not use some design to learn more about your audience, how they are thinking and what they think of you: Seven design psychologies every designer should know.
And from this: what is, right now, what your audience needs? Can you be a thought leader in your field? What reassurances do they want and what content do they want to see? I personally would urge all companies to be doing this as part of their SEO and “trust” or “social proof” strategies.
Look again at eCommerce, even if you don’t now do eCommerce
The Lockdown has changed shopping hugely, and we think habits and behaviour will have changed forever including for grocery and local shoppers. Thanks to PinkSky for this one, who also created the rather useful Corona Business Trajectory.
Prepare for growth
Now is also a good time to kick off that really big business application you have been putting off for a while. You have the brain space for planning. You have the funds – Government help is available to pay for work with agencies such as mine willing to work to deferred payments. And when lockdown finishes you will have the demand. For startups there will be only a subset remaining afterwards and they will be the unicorns of the future(With thanks from Troy Norcross). 2020 was tough for startups even before the Lockdown (Thanks to John Karayel). For companies this quiet period has a small silver lining: for example, event management companies we work with are developing business applications with us, and hotels are re-tooling while bookings and visits are non-existent.
And how is your business?
And lastly in this time of furloughs and remote working, it is time to evaluate who your really key members of staff are, and what lessons can be learned from enforced remote working. This is a great time to get your business working smarter and get some strategic thinking in place. There are some new kids on the block for this: knowframework.com (for working on internal systems, operations and people) and some old hands www.whatandwhy.eu (for looking at your wider strategic aims).
Let’s get Practical
We here at Practically.io are busy helping out companies at all levels with adapting to this new world, as well as helping out agencies who have furloughed their design and technical staff with some smaller tasks.
If you do need help with your online strategy, SEO, or online marketing in general then please do give us a call. As I have said before, as well as us, there is a huge amount of talent we can lean on right now, and the time is now.
This article was first published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meta-network-made-tips-seo-marketing-lockdown-sam-collett/
Photo from https://www.pexels.com/@efdal-yildiz-325089