The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly had an impact on many industries. It’s left some businesses with plenty of time but slashed marketing budgets. There is a silver lining – there’s plenty of free marketing that can help your business remain visible to potential future customers, and keep you in the forefront of their minds when the market picks back up.
Here are my top marketing tips that don’t cost a penny:
Stay active online
In some hard-hit industries, it might not be the right time for a hard sell, but there are plenty of ways to stay visible without directly advertising your company.
Update your Google My Business account with any new opening hours, reply to reviews and create Google Posts so potential customers know you’re still active. That goes for your social media too – keep posting with helpful tips, positive stories and company updates.
Create content
Now is the perfect time to spend your days creating a strong bank of evergreen content that you can use to gain backlinks to your site in the future.
There may even be some content you could use to gain links in the current climate, but it’s important to make sure this is in good taste. Capitalising from COVID-19 is frowned upon and could be seen as inappropriate at the moment – potentially painting your business in a negative light.
However, some journalists are craving positive, heart-warming stories that are unrelated to the pandemic. Uplifting messages and helpful content could be a win at the moment.
YouTube
Even aside from the pandemic, it’s a great idea to have a YouTube presence. With 2 billion logged-in monthly users, it’s cost-effective marketing for small businesses and definitely worth an exploration.
For SMEs, it’s not about attracting millions of views, it’s about pulling in the right audience for you – people that are interested in your products or services.
You can do some simple keyword research on YouTube to find searches related to your business. Pay attention to optimisation and include these targeted keywords in the descriptions – this should help potential customers find your videos.
Subtitles, captions and transcripts help with search engine indexing, alongside ensuring your videos are accessible to a wide audience. Don’t forget to add a link to your site, too!
These marketing ideas may take time, but they don’t dip into the budget!
It’s really important that businesses pull together if we’re going to get through this. If you’d like free, no obligation marketing advice, support or even if you just fancy a chat over the next few months, I’d be happy to try and help – drop me an email to ash@evoluted.email
Ash Young, Evoluted
