7 Online Platforms For Business Continuity During Covid-19
Digital Platforms for Business
Businesses big and small have all been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and have been forced into adopting new online strategies to survive it’s brutal impacts. Many who were not prepared for this global crisis suffered great losses and even shut down, within just a short 3-months of lockdown - even for the big famous brands out there.
We are not certain when this pandemic will be over, but one thing is for sure at the moment: The digital economy is here to stay.
By now, businesses who survived have also learned the importance of adopting new digital methods to continue running their operation from managing their resources, maintaining communication, enabling employees to work from home... to serving and retaining customers with online marketing strategies.
There are tons of solutions for online marketing depending on your goals, business objectives, resources and target audience.
Here’s a list of 7 essential ones that can help you stay ahead of the game more effectively in the long-run, across various stages in a customer journey:
- Website builder platform
- Blogs platform
- Email marketing autoresponder
- Social media marketing platform
- Webinar platform
- SEO & Analytics platform
- Customer service platform
1. Website design platforms
No matter what business you are in or how you plan to communicate with your target market, a website plays a significant role in telling a brand’s story and it supports basically all of your business marketing efforts.
Most people will search online for information before making a purchase - company profiles, product information, reviews and testimonials, compare prices and packages, view portfolios, get user instructions...etc. so your website is where you can display all these necessary information that people are looking for.
Although an e-commerce / marketplace platform offers the structure / architecture that allows you to build online stores, listing your products and services and automating your sales processes, be sure to have your own website (with your own domain) as a leverage to display your key USPs and subscription forms to build up your database.
The key here is to highlight in your own website, why people should choose you / buy from you, instead of your competitors.
Nowadays, web design tools are made simpler with drag-and-drop features plus ready templates for quick and easy setup even without coding skills. Take note that most people also access the internet and make purchases directly on mobile, so be sure to use mobile responsive website builders for a good mobile browsing experience.
Some examples of website design platforms in the market you may have heard of already are Wix, Squarespace, Adobe, Wordpress... but many newbies and even digital marketing experts have started switching to this user-friendly and super valuable all-in-one platform since 2019, where you can build basically any online business models you can think of (blogs, e-commerce, e-learning, memberships… and much more).
2. Blogs platform
Creating content consistently is known to be an important long-term success strategy in marketing. Blogging is one of the most effective ways to build up your brand awareness and niche authority.
As part of the inbound marketing methodology, posting relevant blogs (useful, non-sales content) regularly not only helps keep your website active for SEO and Google ranking, but also enables your brand to communicate and engage your target audience who have interest in your expertise or niche more effectively.
Add also some varieties of content formats to your blog so you can reach audience who prefer other formats of information consumption - content in the form of videos (on Youtube), audios (on Podcast), interactive images or infographics (with Pinterest) for example, besides text formats in blogs.
More benefits of blogging and content creation:
- A highly value-based approach to provide more than just the product / service to your current customers and network - building trust.
- Helps sustain and strengthen your database - building loyalty
- Boost sales opportunities for your offers - building customer lifetime values.
Some of the commonly used platforms for blogging with a huge audience are Medium, Linkedin, Tumblr, .. or build personal blogs with Wordpress.
3. Email marketing autoresponder
Email marketing is highly cost efficient and very effective as it is more about nurturing and qualifying warm leads to convert over time, compared to acquiring new, cold leads which usually gained from paid advertising.
With a good quality database of email lists, a business can retarget the same audience segment multiple times until conversion is achieved. Campaign messages can also be personalized by the reactions of each pesona in different stages and time.
Sending out emails in sequence of structured value-based focused contents (non-sales informative content) in various formats like newsletters, blog post notifications, step-by-step guides, free webinar invites... are great ways to stay in touch and strengthen relationships with current and potential customers.
The beauty of using the autoresponder is that all emails distribution is all happening in the background continuously and automatically by preset time frames, or based on the recipient behaviour (opened emails, link clicks.. etc.) - at mass levels, instead of manually one by one.
Popular email marketing solutions out there : ConvertKit, Get Response, MailChimp, HubSpot, Autopilot, SendinBlue and many more.
4. Social media marketing platform
If social media is your number one strategy and preferred choice of engaging your market, then social media marketing platforms should be a part of your list of tools subscriptions.
Examples of social media marketing platforms out there are Hootsuite, Buffer, Tailwind, FollowerWonk...among others. Not all platforms come in equal features and functionality, but having these tools enables you to:
- manage multiple social media accounts in one place - including for Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit accounts - simultaneously
- systematically analyze insights - your audience profile, campaign performances at multiple aspects and much more..
- automate your work processes - pre-scheduling your posts, auto-posting your content
- have better control of your team and accounts involved - keeping track of everyone’s progress more efficiently
5. Webinar Platform
Webinar tools have always been a popular tool among B2Bs for consultations and business presentations. However, since the Covid-19 pandemic, this industry has seen a more variety of users adopting its technology especially for online education and personal training purposes.
While common usage like team meetings have increased tremendously due to work-from-home policies, there are also businesses who also start using live webinars for B2C interactions and selling their offers online even on Facebook or Youtube lives.
With all the booming demand for webinar-related features, many platforms have included more integrated features such as:
- Webinar registration tools
- Automated email reminders
- Private chats
- Multiple presenters
- Analytics on webinar performance
- and more..
Webinar platforms in the market : Zoom, Demio, WebinarNinja, GotoWebinar, WebEx and many more.
6. SEO & Analytics platforms
Track and measure is another important aspect in everything you do in marketing, and you will need analytics tools to help with this tedious but vital step.
One of the most commonly used, Google Analytics is a standard necessity for most website owners. With the advanced insights from web visitor demographics, the journey taken while browsing your page to how well you are converting are all data you can get from the tool in real time.
Another similar tool such as Kissmetrics can help track your website visitor’s movements, showing where you need to improve for better conversions in every stage of your funnels.
For e-commerce, Woopra is very useful for it’s data on checkout processes, cart abandonment or traffic details that are important aspects of e-commerce conversion success.
Search engine optimization (SEO) platforms help with tracking of your website ranking, backlinks monitoring, competitor analysis, and much more advanced analytics data for elevating brand competitiveness.
SEO platforms are normally used by advanced digital marketers / specialists in helping businesses keep up with the trends, measure a brand’s competitiveness, and using the insights to generate strategic plans for ranking recoveries and staying strong as market leaders.
The most popular ones among digital marketers are Moz, SEMrush, Ahrefs, All-in-one SEO.. among others.
7. Customer service platforms
Besides all the marketing initiatives, it is also extremely important to cover this part of the business - servicing and maintaining good customer experiences online - given that most businesses have to manage customers in non-face-2-face environments especially during the pandemic now.
Managing customer enquiries on time, attending to complaints and getting regular user experience feedback when they visit your online sites are crucial for a brand’s engagement success.
Zendesk is quite popular among support teams, which allows all kinds of communication channels in one - emails, phone calls and even live chats. Other examples of tools are LiveChats, ManyChats, Uservoice HelpDesk other than facebook messenger or whatsapp on mobiles.
Keep in mind also some good survey tools which may be useful for customer surveys such as Survey Monkey, Typeform, Google Forms, Zoho Survey, SurveyGizmo.. depending on your usage levels.
Conclusion
If you are still running your business or planning to start one, go online. Regardless of any sector you are in, almost everything can be sold with online marketing. Amazon, Shopify and Walmart have been reported to have greatly benefited from the change of e-shopping habits during this pandemic year alone.
Brands and retailers who are quick to digital marketing adoptions since before all the lockdowns have come to fully appreciate the benefits of having a strong online presence and plans in place:
- automated sales and payment processes through online stores despite lockdowns.
- remote customer services through social channels and directly on mobile chats.
- optimization of online marketing strategies to stay running and profitable - from lead generation to paid conversions.
- email messaging approaches that help sustain personalized customer communication and loyalty building.
- supporting product user experiences through live webinars and recorded videos on Youtube for self-administered learning
just to name a few...
While famous marketplace platforms are popular for businesses to drive traffic and promote sales opportunities, they are also extremely competitive for smaller brands or newbies, when competing against other market players who have started way ahead.
To stand out, you need other practical ways to compete in the market, besides resorting to price wars. Leverage the list of tools and strategies mentioned above (or others that suit your business needs) so you can build a profitable and sustainable business in the long-term.
. . .
P/S : If you are looking for an all-in-one solution, contact me or visit my website https://aspiredbiz.com/