Richard Conway offers up some quick wins for businesses wanting to localise their digital strategy while keeping their marketing spend to a minimum.
New Zealand has done brilliantly as a country during the Covid-19 crisis. The sense of togetherness, solidarity and willingness to help others has been both inspiring and humbling. Luckily, our government acted swiftly and strongly, and while this has reaped outstanding results for public health and safety and eliminating the virus, this has caused businesses small and large to suffer, especially in the short term.
As restrictions loosen, it’s time to refocus our energies and home in on recovery.
History has shown that companies who continue or accelerate their marketing efforts during a downturn are the ones that emerge the strongest.
My own company, Pure SEO, took a large hit over the past couple of months, primarily due to travel and tourism clients severely impacted by the pandemic. However, we have now pivoted our marketing to focus on the fact that there has been a huge surge in online traffic and e-commerce.
One of the messages we have been putting out is: Where has all the traffic gone? Online!
Below are the platforms we should all be investing our limited resources into, and a couple of great success stories to encourage us further.
Social media
Social media has seen an explosion in use during the crisis and has cemented itself as a cost-effective (and often free) channel to gain customers, connect with people and to both impart and receive excellent advice and knowledge.
One of the shining stars is the Facebook group “New Zealand Made Products” set up by Sarah Colcord. Over a short space of time, this group has grown from a concept to a highly active and effective channel with (at last count) 490,000 members.
Where else can you get your message out to half a million active and engaged Kiwis at no monetary cost?
LinkedIn has also continued to be an effective (and free) channel to disseminate information, as well as engage with, and market to, potential customers. As long as you post something that will be interesting to your audience and offers value, the likelihood of it being seen by a large number of people is quite high.
On May 27th, I created a post about a Google Ads change, and within a week it had been seen by more than 13,000 people.
Search
During the lockdown, Google saw a 70 percent increase in traffic. Since the lockdown has ended, there remains a large increase in online use and adoption. To best leverage this, businesses with lower budgets should focus on localisation of their search marketing.
As people flock online, Google My Business (GMB) has become more important than ever. Your GMB profile needs to be kept up to date with current and relevant information about your business. In May 2020, Google released several new GMB tools for companies to leverage. These include the addition of support links: “Merchants will be able to add a donation link, gift card link or both to their profile. They can also share a personal message in their post to inform customers how funds will be put to use.”
GMB has also added the ability to include secondary hours, made changes to Reserve with Google, and adapted its hospitality business listings.
Having your own website is now more critical than ever. Google loves content, and also loves it when a searcher has a good experience on your website. Just recently, Google made the unusual announcement that they will be updating their algorithm next year to focus on “evaluating page experience for a better web”.
While you may not be able to leverage this yet, it is something very important to understand and incorporate into your web strategy now.
There are so many other amazing (and free) ways for you to reach your audience. Manaaki, for example, is a platform where business experts answer business questions and help small businesses. The free platform SOS Business facilitates small businesses selling vouchers to customers which can be redeemed at a later date. It provided small businesses with a lifeline during the restrictions.
Now more than ever, business owners need to be smart and localise their digital strategy. Reach out for advice so you can better leverage the multitude of opportunities on offer.
