Combat the impact of COVID-19 via SEO and Marketing. part two

We had an overwhelming positive response to Part 1 of tips to help your business combat the impact of COVID-19 via SEO and Marketing. We hope you enjoy Part 2!

 There are endless things you can do now from a marketing perspective to help your business bounce back when this all passes. At the moment, marketing is the one thing we can control. Now more than ever is the time to pivot your business to be 100% online if it's not already. You can control your messaging and marketing to control your buyer’s behavior. Based on data, 95% of all purchasing decisions are emotional, especially now more than ever!

 Below we continue to share some tips on how to maximise your short- and long-term business plans;

• Work on your online reviews’ strategy. People look to reviews in order to make decisions and are critical to every business! Ensure your reviews are featured throughout your website; homepage, contact us page, reviews page, about us page - anywhere that works for you. Make sure you respond to ALL public reviews including the negative ones in an appropriate manner. Feedback, both positive or negative helps you improve your business. Dedicate someone within the business to take charge of getting reviews and ensure they respond in the appropriate voice. Reviews are invaluable to the business especially if they mention certain employee names and detail their experiences. If you reach out to an extensive list, note that 40% of people you ask to give a review will give you one. The most incredible statistic is; one review can increase conversions by 365%!
• Get behind digital in a big way. We cannot stress this enough. Get your storefront online and make your products available to purchase online. Now is the time to optimise your site so it gives a better experience! Maybe your site isn’t easy to use, now is the time to analyse and update.
• Update your My Google Business page. Update your hours if they’ve recently changed and messaging services. If your business is taking special care to avoid the spread of the virus, add this messaging to create peace of mind! 
• Show your website some love. As mentioned before, go and fix your site or give it some love! Turn it into the profit engine it was dreamt up to be.
• Sniff out unnatural links. Within weeks your google position will grow and shoot up in the rankings! You need to be careful and really know what you are doing with link building. NB: Please leave this step to the team at UBT to look after for you!
• Consider an outreach strategy. Use your network and reach out to people to create blogs and podcasts. The algorithm of Google was based on links and amazingly 40% of SEO is off-page. SEO and online marketing are avenues to build connection and trust with people. How you do that during challenging times, matters just as much if not more than ever. Marketing strategies have changed and have now become about the persona of your business. Ask yourself, what is your level of connection; is it daily, weekly or monthly? Right now, it’s time to get a bit closer. Stay in contact! Continue the outreach you were already doing via your EDM’s or text messaging, so your customers won't forget about you. People are doing business with you because of the value and results they feel from your business. If they don’t trust you, they will take their business elsewhere. Come up with a new offer or change the online experience for them. There are so many things you can do to operate to the optimum in this environment.
• Get to know customers better with a deep dive into your first-party data. Reach out to your customers and understand what is going on. Your clients will appreciate you making contact and showing you care. If you have a larger client base, go through your analytics and sales data. What is in the data you may have missed in the past? Look for trends that can help you hone in and be significantly more effective with your marketing. 

 A reminder that’s still more valid than ever; keep calm and optimise on!

We are all trying to figure this out together and we can help one another to get through this. If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected]