During hard times a lot of local business owners have the natural instinct of cutting all their spending, but is that the right decision? There are numerous things that you, as a business owner, can do to have a strong business while the wind blows against you.
1) Adapt to the situation in the early stages of the crisis.
Analyze the situation and think about ways to adapt your services and goods to the current situation. There are a lot of small local businesses that do not offer delivery or don’t have an online presence at all. An online store or website can double or triple your income. Just because it worked until now without it that does not mean that it is the smart decision.
2) Optimize your business and be more structured.
If until now we could afford to spend money on different fancy tools and toys that made our business more fun, now is the time to invest in what beings money to your business. I know numerous business owners that are paying monthly packages to services they never used, but they were too busy to look into it and cancel.
3) Keep in contact with your customers
You probably have a social media account already and you probably have not posted anything there for the past 2 years, but now you should be more active than ever. Teach your customers or potential customers about your product or service, have them understand how your product can be used and help their life be more prosperous. Get more personal, more understanding and listen to what your customers are saying. This will help you tremendously in the long run and especially when people will be put in a situation to choose between you and your competitor.
Will they pick the one that allocated the effort to educate, understand and listen to them or the one that talks to them only when there is money on the line?
4) Optimize and market your business like a mad man
Sounds weird, right? Why would you spend money when your business is not even open? Yes, now it’s the best time to market and invest in your web design and SEO. While your competition is too scared to do anything, you can take advantage and build a steel backbone for your business on the online front. Go to social media; write posts every day, make videos, teach people about your business. Reach out to other brands in your niche; try to get a link towards your site. Get your on-site and off-site SEO as tough as nails.
5) Engage with the local community.
There are so many groups out there for your community, if you go right now on Facebook and write your city name in the search bar, you will find at least five or six communities based around your city. Go and join, talk to people, don’t annoy people with sales promotion and so on, but make yourself and your business known. Those groups can really make or break a local business.
There are a lot of benefits of having a business in tough times, take advantage of the opportunity and maximize the visibility of your business for a later gain.
