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After a month or more of social distancing due to COVID-19, it can feel at this point like a life of isolation is almost normal. With the uneasiness and uncertainty that comes with being disconnected from your normal routine and for some, complete disappearance of your day to day responsibilities, it’s easy to have similar fears regarding what life will look like when things do begin to open up again.

While life, business, and social activities may not be the same for quite some time, here are some things you can do to prepare for the end of quarantine.

Utilize Your Digital Resources To Stay Connected

LinkedIn is an excellent way to converse and network. Consider starting a conversation with a few of your connections you haven’t talked to in awhile, just to see how they’re doing or what they’re doing to keep things going during the quarantine. You may also research online groups in your industry in an effort to learn from peers on how they’ve been going about handling a time like this. 

In addition to LinkedIn, video conferencing apps like FaceTime or Zoom are great to sit and chat with co workers, employees, or clients face to face. While email, text message, and phone call are always an option, a face to face conversation can serve as a much more personal method of communication and can go a long way during a time where many are alone for a majority of the time.

Create A Routine

Between Tiger King and the idea that you definitely are allowed to stay in your pajamas if you want to, it can become tempting to completely fall out of your regular routine by sleeping later, going to bed later, working from the couch, etc, making it that much harder to jump back into your routine when the time comes. Beginning to add small pieces of your old routine back into your day such as a consistent wake time, the same check in call with a colleague, and a clear workspace will make the transition much easier. You may even consider using a mediation or sleep app.

Move Your Body

I’ve heard the term “quarantined potato” more than once in the last week, so I think it’s time to address it! Whether you’ve got a full basement gym, or live in a 400 sq ft studio apartment, moving your body every day will keep you both mentally and physically healthy. You can always head to YouTube to find free videos that can take you through something like an at home yoga flow or something of higher intensity, with no equipment of course. 

Email marketing will forever serve as a “must have” in the digital marketing space for a multitude of reasons. 

Email is an excellent way to generate a better experience for both customers as well as potential customers by offering consistent value and continuing to establish credibility. Email is also one of the easiest ways to track and measure what types of content your audience responds to and engages with the most. 

The most difficult thing business owners encounter when it comes to email marketing is actually building their list and getting email addresses compiled. When it comes to generating a strong email list, it’s actually much easier than one would think. 

Strategies for growing your list can include: 

Incentives

Different types of giveaways or opportunities to win prizes by sharing one’s email is an excellent way to encourage someone to opt into your email list. Incentives can be offered in person, over social media, or on your website. 

Collect Business Cards

Be diligent about collecting business cards at networking events. Even if you don’t particularly believe someone is in an industry that you’re interested in doing business with, remember that building a relationship with that person and gaining their trust through email marketing may result in a referral partnership. 

Provide Opportunity On Your Website

Make sure that each page of your website gives the user an opportunity to opt into your email list to receive constant, free, and valuable information

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies when it comes to nurturing your audience. In order to reap all the benefits of email, though, it is imperative to keep the following components in mind. 

Segment Your Audience

If you make list building a priority, you will end up with a full and robust email list and not all of your audience members will be similar. This will result in your need to create different messaging and send it to different audience segments in an effort to connect with each person.

Place An Emphasis On Aesthetics

While it isn’t necessary to be an award winning graphic designer, it is important to make sure your branding remains clean and professional. Making use of free services like canva or mailchimp will help you to keep your email blasts on brand and looking legitimate. 

Automation

Automation can help with both time efficiency and can keep things streamlined. When content is batch created and scheduled out, things can automate over time without the need to continually spend time going in and writing new content.

Plan Ahead

Planning out multiple email drips in a campaign can make content creation easy and efficient. Understanding offers, new products, launches, and announcements ahead of time allows your brand to stay ahead of the game and lets your audience know you’re committed to keeping them retained and informed. 

When looking to connect with consumers or potential consumers, it is imperative to make sure online reputation management is a cornerstone of your marketing strategy. We’ve listed out a few of our favorite tactics when it comes to reputation management in the digital space.

Happy Customers Are Key

Positive online reviews are one of the best ways to gain new business. But, without happy customers, online reviews are few and far between. Make it a priority to provide not only a quality product, but quality customer service – all while encouraging your customers to leave reviews either on Google or on your social media pages. 

At the end of the day, many make decisions based off of social proof, and ratings and reviews found on the internet play a big part in that. Next time you are interacting with a customer, ask yourself, “will this generate a positive review?”

Create A Relationship With Satisfied Customers

After a purchase is made, it is important to follow up with the customer to not only understand how they liked the product, but to also find out about their customer service experience. What did they like? What did they dislike? Would they work with you again? Why or why not? Establishing a relationship with a happy customer can and will result in future referrals in addition to online reviews. 

Don’t Turn A Blind Eye To Complaints

While it is human nature to want to ignore a complaint or a negative review, make sure to never ignore or delete them. Instead, be honest and kind in your response as it is pivotal that you are a trusted and transparent brand. Acknowledge the negative feedback, apologize, and offer a solution. The main rule of thumb is to respond to the person who reviewed as if they are your entire online audience, so that current and potential customers can see that you are positive minded and focused on providing exceptional customer service. 

A solid social media campaign will utilize many different platforms, not just one or two. While each platform does require a slightly different strategy, there are some general guidelines that can be and are applicable across every type of social media channel. 

Stay Consistent 

Posting on a consistent basis will not only help to build your audience, but maintain it as well. With that said, there are some social media platforms that will reward you for your consistent posts more than others. As an example, you’ll see better results on Instagram than you will on Facebook if you post multiple times per day. This means the more you post on Instagram, the better you’ll be treated by the algorithm, but Facebook will still hide the majority of your posts unless you boost them. 

Maintain Your Messaging

While it is imperative that you are active across all social media platforms, you’ve got to keep your messaging consistent. You may choose to change up how you deliver each message, whether that may be via video, text, or photo, but each message should be consistent with one another. 

Track Results

Social media’s ability to track post each and engagement makes it a valuable tool to understand what your audience wants and what they respond to well. The metrics available such as likes, comments, shares, and other aspects of engagement will allow you to adjust your strategy from month to month for maximum results. 

Communicate With Your Audience

The ability to like, comment, and share content with your audience makes it personal and interactive. Responding to comments and showing support to your customers will insert the human element making you look down to earth, approachable, and like someone who cares about their online community. 

In all industries, social media has opened new doors and improved brand recognition for businesses. With that said, even if your business does not have a dedicated, in-house marketing team, you can still utilize social media to grow your brand. 

Social Media When You’re On A Budget

Let’s say you don’t have much working capital to spend on marketing and advertising, let alone an entire team to focus on just that. While there are other facets of marketing that are more time consuming and expensive, you can still utilize social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to build your brand and promote your products or services. You will also find that when your audience shares or retweets your content, a large amount of your marketing is done for you. 

Social Media Specifically For Your Industry 
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, businesses can utilize LinkedIn to write and publish articles establishing themselves as a thought leader in their industry and to gain credibility. LinkedIn is also an excellent way to virtually network with potential referral partners. 

Paid Social Media Advertising

Social Media platforms give users the ability to pick and choose how much money they put into their campaigns and when they do it – making it an excellent resource for those on a tighter budget. You’ll have the option to choose whose news feed your posts will be placed on, and how many people will see it. 

Getting The Hang Of It

If DIY marketing is what you’re going for, make sure that you’re well versed in the guidelines that have been set by both your company or industry, as well as each specific platform. Once you know what you can and can’t post, do your best to remain positive, consistent, and engaged with your audience to develop strong brand awareness and a digital footprint. 

In marketing, we often hear social proof as a strategy we “should’ use. But, what is social proof exactly? 

In simple terms, social proof is relying on the experiences and thoughts of others to help us make a decision. It’s the reason you read product review or ask local residents for a restaurant recommendation. We use social proof more often than we even realize, from purchasing something for the home or booking a vacation, we’re constantly looking for validation in our choices from those around us. 

So, how do we utilize this tactic in marketing? 

Online User Reviews

When considering whether or not to work with you, many of your prospective customers or clients will head over to your website or to google and look for any reviews, both good and bad. It is understood that it may be difficult to acquire reviews at first, so here are some ideas:

• Just ask. Every purchase made, ask for a review or a rating of your buyer’s experience. Be sure that the process is simple and easy, with very short feedback forms and one-click ratings. 
• Incentivise. As an example, a discount code or a store credit can be a great way to not only get a review but to also entice your buyers to purchase from you again. 
• Respond to negative feedback. Even the best brands sometimes receive negative comments from time to time. Remember that your response is to your entire audience, not just the person who wrote it. Repsonding correctly will show potential customers that you are credible and trustworthy. 

Influencer Partnerships

By creating a relationship with an influencer, they will use and post your product to their large audience. This not only is an excellent way to get in front of a large audience, but is also a great way to gain exposure to your possible ideal client. Be sure to make sure that you don’t just partner with any influencer, and that that particular individual’s values align with yours.

Testimonials

Similar to a review, a testimonials are user generated content that will not only talk about a previous customer’s experience, but will also talk about the results they got from your service. This will help nurture the relationship you are trying to build with your potential client but allowing them to know, like, and eventually trust you and what you will be able to do for them. 

Utilize the tips you’d follow when asking for a review, and specifically ask your previous customers to talk in detail about what’s improved for them after working with you.

What Exactly Is Content Marketing?

The first thing to keep in mind when creating content is to keep it simple. The more complicated you make things, the less of an impression you’ll leave. Consistent, simple information over a span of time eventually will influence the behavior of your audience.  

Instead of spending tons of time trying to identify the exact lingo you’ll use, when you’ll post it, and who you’ll target, just remain consistent about what you’re trying to convey, in simple terms, for a long period of time. 

Why Use Content Marketing?

Content provides continuous value to your audience, which results in gained trust and increased engagement. Over time, your content will be shared and commented on and eventually you will become the resource they go to when they need both information and services. 

Tips When Building Your Content Strategy

Set Some Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your content? Make sure your goals are clear and concise. Knowing exactly what you’re trying to do will help you decide on what you’re going to create. Looking for more web traffic? Newsletter or blog subscriptions? Maybe, you’re just looking to become a resource and thought leader within your industry. Regardless of your goals, consistent content marketing can help you achieve them. 

Listen To Your Audience

Think about your ideal customer: what are they looking for? What do they want to know? What are their pain points? Once you complete this market research, you’ll have the opportunity to create content that will speak directly to your ideal client.

Don’t Create Content Just To Have More

Although having a full content section of your website is both healthy and important, don’t create low quality content just to have more. Doing so will result in lack of trust and will make you a less credible resource which is counterproductive to reaching your goals.

Once you sign a client, it’s easy to be excited about the sale and move onto selling someone else. But, what if you shifted the time and energy spent on sales and acquisitions and spent more of it on client engagement and retention? 

Nurturing the relationships you have with your current clients will increase long term revenue, build trust, and eventually result in a possible upsale. So, how do you nurture those relationships and constantly add value to your current clients? 

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent and highly effective method for adding value to your current clients, helping them to learn, and continuing to connect with them on a regular basis. 

When designing your email marketing campaign, consider spending time thinking about ways to re-engage and educate those you’ve already done business with. Not only will this entice them to possibly do more business with you, but it will also keep you top of mind when it comes to referrals. 

Social Media

Many want to look to social media to increase web traffic and get more eyes on their content. But, that isn’t all that social media is for. It is important to know that proper utilization of social media platforms can keep current clients excited about what you’re offering and ensure that you remain credible online.

Digital marketing is arguably one of the most imperative aspects of business. Meaning, in order for your company to reach its full potential, it is extremely important to establish a digital footprint and to deliver value and resources to your audience online.

When constructing a digital strategy, it is important to keep in mind that customers need a simple way to contact you and to learn about your products and services in a simple, clean way. This can be achieved through website, email, phone, social media, and more.

Additionally, we’ve compiled a few extra ways to engage your audience and earn their trust.  

• Work on your Google ranking. This means possibly re-designing your site, or even buying or bidding on important keywords that your ideal client will use when searching a service like yours.
• Double check that all social media platforms link directly to your website. While building a following and cultivating a community across diverse platforms is important, it is imperative that everything links back to your company’s website.
• Make sure you know your audience. By studying analytics, you will know what types of content perform best with your audience and who engages the most. This information will help you to audit your social media strategy over time in order to cater to your ideal client.
• Use the right language and hashtags to help with brand recognition and promotion. Over time, specific phrases and words will automatically make your audience think of you and what you offer.
• Promote something fun. A digital strategy is not only about being informative, but you also want to incentivize people to get in the door. What are your products and what are your offers? Do you have any discounts?