Businesses globally are facing challenging times. With COVID 19 not showing signs of slowing down and lockdowns in major cities around the globe, we all should think if we are prepared for the long haul this pandemic will cause. On the business front, while big companies and corporations with strong cash flows will sustain, what will the smaller organizations, startups, SMEs, and MSMEs do? The instant reaction by most companies is to cut down marketing spends but research shows that brands who continue spending during difficult times, gain more in better times. There is no doubt that this crisis has created unprecedented disruption for businesses but brands are now looking at various ways to make it work to their benefit.

Recent reports show an increase in digital content consumption among audiences and this has prompted brands to decrease their spending on traditional & OOH marketing and increase spends on digital platforms.

Here’s a list of digital marketing ideas that can be beneficial for all but is economical with good ROI for SMEs and start-ups :

1. Use Social Media to connect with your audience: Yes, social media is the best medium for any creative advertising agency or the normal business. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp have massive databases of users and followers. These sites give you a good platform to boost your marketing posts & paid campaigns.

2. Ensure your business is found online (SEO): We urge you to focus on SEO in this lockdown period because a new survey conducted by various institutes validates the importance of maintaining your SEO efforts through this downturn. Get done the audit of your website’s on-page, off-page, and Technical SEO. The clause which you’ll come across after performing an audit, start working on it and minimize the hurdles that stop your business growth.

3. Invest in PPC Advertising: In these economic downtimes, many of the businesses are worrying about their marketing spends and hence, dropped their ad campaigns to very low spends. We don’t say it’s wrong but, taking such a big step may cause damage in the future. If you are in a media, healthcare, or education industry then, it’s a good opportunity for you to double your organic traffic. But, if you are a travel agency, sports company, construction firm, automobile manufacturer then, it’s a difficult time for you. You can run brand awareness campaigns at minimal spends to promote your products or services through COVID-19 safety tips.

4. Continue your digital activity: halting SEO now and resuming it after 2-3 months will mean a long wait for results to show up as SEO is a long term activity. At present if you see most of the industries organic traffic has got affected due to lockdown. Though some of them are continued with SEO and other activities, still they are facing the traffic issue. So, if you have stopped such activities, then it would be a great loss for you.
Hiring a good digital marketing agency in India could be a right choice for all those industries who want to keep their business on track.

5. Focus more on website maintenance: This is the best time for you to focus on improving your website from all perspectives. Do website audits, prepare content clusters, design attractive & user-friendly pages. This will help you greatly during & post lockdown to gain more traffic and conversions.

6. Work on content marketing: To increase your conversion rate, feeding your customers with upto date informative web pages, attractive & unique social media posts, Text ads, infographics, creatives, Emailers, messages, videos, podcasts, blogs, news, and achievements is highly important.
If your industry doesn’t have a good content writer then, connecting with the best digital marketing agency in India or good content writers in India can help you to improve your industry or business’s online presence significantly.

7. Email Marketing: This is the best option for any business to reach their prospective and new customers with their services & products along with its discounts, offers, promo codes, etc. Though the conversion rate of emailers is low, still it impacts the customer’s mind and they will surely visit your website or store after some time.
So, communicating with email marketing experts or digital marketing agencies who offer email marketing services and tools can become a digital medium of communication for you and your customers. What are you thinking for? Let’s have a call with Hashtasy, the best digital marketing agency in Mumbai.

8. Video Marketing: Communicating with your prospective clients and customers through small videos is always good. If you are a digital marketing agency, then it would be easy for you to make such small videos. But, if you are some other business, then either try to make such small videos on your own or higher a good digital marketing agency like Hashtasy and share your message, activities, products, services using such a friendly and formal technique.

9. Design Creatives: Saying your customers, partners, and other important people that we are with you in this tough time in a creative way makes them happy. Similarly, your goodwill can also increase through such awareness campaigns.
There are various types of creatives available in the market such as social media creatives, banners and backdrop design, point of sales design, hoarding, brochure, and flyer designs. Let’s identify your industry needs and select the best digital medium of creative communication accordingly, either on you or consult with the best creative agency.

10. Future Business Plan: This is a highly important activity for any kind of business. If your business is in a good position and during this lockdown also running well plus giving a fairly good return on investment, then you can think of either expansion of your business or can strategize for the acquisition of competitor’s business or startup which is worth to invest and going to give you strong results in near future.

Recently, an example of a good business strategy has come in front of us, and that is the 10% merger of Reliance JIO with Facebook. Both businesses are running well during this tough time as well. The collaboration of such two big companies have set the direction for other businesses as well.

After looking at these 10 important digital marketing activities that need to be undertaken in lockdown, We hope that it’s more than enough for any startup, SMEs, and other businesses to open the lockdown’s lock on their business. So, think, and start working accordingly.

If you find these tips useful and meaningful, please drop your feedback at connect@hashtasy.com or you can connect with us on our social media profiles.