We are in the fourth month of 2020 and the first quarter has already passed.
When new strategies, products, and services were rushed and flushed into the market, little did the trends capture the downside of a pandemic. With the world economy standing at the juncture of an economic crisis and global health crisis – Businesses just have one question – Will they ever see the light of Q3 or will they shut down?
In this article, we amalgamated
- What the business gurus are stating
- And our marketing experience
To help startups in leveraging digital marketing for ROI driven results.
Present Situation Analysis
When COVID-19 hit India, all the rookie entrepreneurs started selling masks and sanitizes at six times the actual selling price to earn profits. However, little did they realize that it was just the starting of an economic slump that was going to hit the country.
According to Business World, there are 14,792 confirmed cases in India so far, and the death toll stands at 488 – Which simply translates into
- Identification of the hotspots
- Complete lockdown
- Curfew in high-risk areas
- Social distancing
For businesses – All this is like a nightmare.
Dying markets due to lack of mobility and decline in purchasing power has made it difficult for businesses to pivot from their business model and survive COVID-19. However, if the situation is looked upon with a broader perspective, the impact on Indian startups has been variable.
- The travel and tourism industry has suffered the most. With a hit on their revenue stream and online traffic, startups in this space have to think about something out of the box to sustain for at least a year or so.
- Other offline businesses owned by small/medium business owners have entirely shut down.
- Meanwhile, e-commerce brands selling groceries have seen a steep spike in their sales.
- The subscription economy has boomed again, and the streaming service providers have witnessed a hike in demand for their content.
- Also, the healthcare sector has seen spikes as a by-product of the pandemic.
Hence, it is challenging to deduce a complete picture without analyzing every industry, segment and sector.
But should these stats and reports make entrepreneurs and hustlers to give up on their dreams? – Absolutely not!
In this situation, a startup or a business needs to realize how it can provide value to their end consumers. Digital products, remote work tools, out of the box SAAS products – There are endless ways to earn profits despite the downfall. This means all that a business has to do is to draw a new plan of business, pivot if necessary and then jump into the market!
Now when you know that the situation is not that hopeless for the startups, you can surely try some growth hacks and digital marketing strategies to give your business the push that it requires in order to sustain the global crisis!
For this reason, our team of experts at Branding Venture has curated some strategies, practices, and funnels that might work for your business in some way or the other.
Ready to explore them? Then read along.
Strategy Number 1: Run Online Ads
During these times, the number of ads have reduced. Hence, you have a competitive advantage. While your competitors have shut their ad campaigns, you can create a bidding strategy that can give you a higher ROI.
Strategy Number 2: Build Communities
With the engagement matrix being stronger then ever, you can start building your community over Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. This community will give you access to prospects that might buy your product and services when the time comes. Regular content postings, freebies and pro-bono projects can work wonders for building a fan following around your brand.
Strategy Number 3: Referral Program
According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know. And given the present situation, there is nothing better than referral clients at the moment. Referral clients have little or no acquisition cost. You can simply ask your existing customers for testimonials and referrals to sustain your business.
Just make a funnel around it and offer benefits to your existing clients to incentivize them and make them work as your brand ambassadors.
Strategy 4: Hosting Webinars
Live videos and webinars have been working quite well for both B2B and B2C businesses. With both paid and free platforms available to conduct a webinar, you can actually share knowledge/content related to your niche and business online in just a few clicks. However, having an up-selling strategy is place is quite essential to drive ROI out of these webinars.
Strategy 5: Lifetime Deals
With so many people learning new skills and experimenting with new tools to enhance their earning portfolio, you can surely leverage these times to sell lifetime deals of your product.
All you have to do is represent your product well – You can use platforms like Click Funnels to attract your audience and convert the maximum number of prospects. Create a ‘FOMO’ – ‘Fear of missing out’ in the minds of your target audience + provide value, and there is nothing that can stop you from reaching your revenue targets.
Strategy 6: Build An Emailing List
Instagram, Facebook or any platform is based on algorithms. And the day the algorithm changes, you might lose all that you have built. Hence, it is crucial for businesses to create a platform or means of communication that is 100% in their control. An emailing list is that mode!
You can start building your email list by running ad campaigns as the data is so cheaply available (due to the decrease in per click/lead cost). So what are you waiting for? Open email octopus or mail chimp to start leveraging email marketing!
Strategy 7: Leverage Social Media For Real
Likes, share, comments – They have never been so real. Social media is the right place to connect with your target audience for free. As discussed, you can build your community and fan following by executing a well-thought social media strategy.
However, make sure that you push quality content, images, carousels, and infographics to attract maximum people to your handles.
Pro Tip: Leverage video content pieces to grow exponentially over Facebook and Instagram.
Strategy 8: Help Now, Reap Later
Profits are undoubtedly important, but they do not form the whole picture of your business’ success. By providing free content to your prospects and helping them to grow in these difficult times can help your business to go a long way.
Hence, help now and reap later. Take this as a process of nurturing your leads, and when the time comes, convert these leads into profits.
Strategy 9: Start With Content Building
If you have been ignoring content for a long time, you ought to stop. Start using Trello and Notion to design your content marketing strategy now and reap the benefits of the same, later.
Articles, short-form content pieces, graphics, videos – Try every content type to test what works for your business and what does not. Just slice and dice content pieces to form a funnel that generates maximum awareness around your brand.
Strategy 10: Target The Culture – Reverse Engineer
COVID-19 might leave the country, but the remote work culture is here to stay. Hence, you can construct a new business or pivot from the existing plan to accommodate the cultural changes that are a by-product of remote working.
For example, you can start targeting the slack marketplace to grow your tech or agency business by providing extensions/marketing plug to the present remote work enabling tools.
With this, we come to the end of this article. We hope this article was helpful for you to understand that digital marketing is recession-proof. All you have to do is to work on a couple of new funnels and flows in order to help your business reach its Q3 profit goals.
Also, in case you wish to seek help in implementing any of the above strategies, then do connect with our experts at Branding Venture – For astounding solutions and strategies!
And until the next time,
Keep Hustling!
Want to discuss your Q3 profit goals contact us today!
Write at hello@brandingventure.us or call at Ph: +91 83680 18647
