Online businesses have an advantage when brick-and-mortar companies were hit by the pandemic. Since online brands have been catering to online consumers for quite some time now, they are already in the market when more consumers went online shopping.
While offline brands are struggling to start and improve their online marketing efforts, online businesses are already thriving.
But as time passes by, the growing number of online competition affected the sales and traffic of purely online brands.
This is especially true after larger corporations and household brands went online. What can small online businesses do to keep up with their competition and bring in more revenue during the crisis?
Reevaluate Your Offers
Businesses are more essential during the pandemic. Others are considered nice-to-haves or simply irrelevant to today’s consumer needs. If your offers belong to the latter group, then you need to rethink your strategy and make your offerings look relevant in today’s pandemic-stricken world.
For instance, you run a souvenir shop where you sell trinkets and giveaways for special occasions. You even have a brand new laser cutter and engraver machine for your business. But because of the pandemic, social gatherings are discouraged and your sales have declined as well.
What you can do is to think of other things you can create with your resources that you think can entice your general audience. For instance, you can start selling custom-made accessories where customers can send you a design they want to be engraved on their phones. You can include t-shirts, purses, tumblers, phone cases, and other things people often use on a daily basis in your inventory to give your customers more options.
Sometimes, you just need to add a sprinkle of creativity to sell what you already have to offer. Once the situation starts going back to normal, you need to make another reevaluation if your new and old offers are still relevant. You need to continue doing this to ensure you are giving your target consumers what they want and need at the right time.
Stay Active on Social Media
There is no point in simply garnering likes and followers on your business social media page. If you haven’t been using a call-to-action in your social media posts, then now is the best time to do this. Allowing your customers to buy your products you are actively advertising on your pages is a great way to win instant customers.
Aside from this, make sure you are socially active enough on all of your social media pages. Regularly post relevant content and engage with your followers. Reply to their comments, respond to direct messages in a timely manner, and resolve issues asap.
Use social media as a platform to promote your brand, showcase your offers, and give consumers more reason to visit your website. Don’t forget about targeting the right audiences. Don’t simply use the boost post button and start utilizing social media ads.
Boost Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If your business is not SEO-optimized, then your target audiences will have a hard time finding your brand and offers on the search engine results page (SERP). You want your website to stay on the first page of SERP and as much as possible, high up the results. The higher your rank is, the better your chances of customers clicking on your link and visiting your website.
There are many things you need to do to ensure your business is SEO-optimized. This includes the following:
- Claim your business in Google My Business and ensure that all of your details in every other online listing are accurate and up to date
- Create engaging content relevant to your industry and niche
- Boost your website load speed and user navigation
- Gain quality backlinks
- Optimize for both on-page and off-page SEO
- Optimize your site for mobile
- Determine, invest, and optimize new sales channels
Improve Your Delivery Services
More consumers may be shopping online and have their orders delivered to their doorstep. But with the amount of competition you now have, one thing that can set your brand apart from others is by improving your delivery services.
Just because online shoppers know deliveries can take a while does not mean you won’t do anything about your deliveries.
Treat your customers to an improved delivery system. For one, you can offer free deliveries if they reach a minimum amount or offer freebies for every order. For customers who are willing to pay for expedited shipping, make sure your carrier partner can deliver in a timely manner.
If you can, invest in local warehouses if you are catering to consumers in other countries or states. This can help improve the delivery time. Just make sure you have enough stocks on each new location so you can provide realistic deadlines to your customers.
There are many other things you can invest in that can help boost your online sales during the crisis. Keep in mind that your customers’ needs always come first. This can be tricky considering the surge in competitors and the ever-changing demand of pandemic consumers.