It’s certainly extraordinary times we are in, and your inbox has probably been bombarded like mine the past couple of weeks with COVID-19 information.

I’ve been busy helping clients with ideas on how they can continue to serve their audience while the "normal" way of doing business has been either severely impacted or suspended altogether for them.

And also to take advantage of any additional time they might have during this time to help their business come out stronger on the other side of this.

I’d like to share these ideas with you in case they can be of help.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT YOUR OVERALL BRAND IDENTITY

A very common saying is "if you try to please everyone, you please no one". This is very true when it comes to marketing. It’s always a valuable exercise to take a step back and review:

• What does your business stand for;
• Who is your targeted audience;
• Is your existing marketing strategy reflecting the above, including the messaging and language you are using on your website and social channels (Facebook, Instagram etc.)
• Is your logo reflective of the above?

EMBRACE VIDEO

Video is more important than ever as an effective way to engage with your customers, and raise your visibility. People love video….and Facebook & Instagram reward those who do video by showing those posts to a bigger audience. Even more so if you do a Facebook Live or Instagram Live.

Depending on your business, ideas can include:

• If you’re a coach, it could be demonstrating specific exercises for horse and/or rider;
• If you’re a massage therapist, it could be showing techniques people can use on themselves or their horse;
• A tack shop or equipment supplier could do a series featuring different products and talking/demonstrating their uses;
• Vet clinics could talk about bio-security measures that can be implemented at the barn;

Get creative. Content will not only keep you presence of mind with current customers/clients, but can also expand your audience into new customers when you’re fully back in business.

KEEP BUILDING YOUR AUDIENCE

Use this time to keep building your audience, both on your social media channels as well as your email list. Creating and sending out regular content (including video as per above), will help achieve this. So will doing targeted advertising campaigns on Facebook & Instagram. A number of companies have either scaled back or stopped their online ads altogether. This means it’s a less ‘noisy’ place in terms of competing for attention with other ads. Take advantage of this. It’s a great time to test out campaign strategies for a low daily cost. Not only will you be reaching out to a new audience, you’ll be gathering valuable data on what worked & what didn’t that you can use for future campaigns.

SELLING ONLINE

If you are a product-based business, and you don’t already, now is the perfect time to build an e-commerce segment for your business. There are different solutions out there to do this, and one I highly recommend is www.Shopify.com. They are a Canadian-based company, and from Day 1 they have built their platform solely for e-commerce. It’s a pretty user-friendly system to use, so you could even build up your store yourself. Or you could hire a web expert to quickly develop for you. Plus Shopify’s back-end system is very well designed and easy for you to use to manage your website on a day-to-day basis, and their technical support is exceptional.

SUPER-SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS

Keep showing up for your customers. They will remember you for it when the world returns to a more normal state. Keep connecting with them over social media and your email list. As long as you are helping people, your business will remain of value to them.


Take care during these challenging times, and as always don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

I’m always happy to help.