If you’re your primary growth model for your business was through word of mouth or through channels that were not digital, you’ll likely experience a larger decline in business than those that have a strong online presence through search engines like google and google maps. Your business model must have many legs to stand on. Instead of walking like a human, you have to be more like a spider and have multiple channels of revenue.

With the coronavirus becoming a pandemic and proliferating throughout the United States, businesses and consumers alike are shifting to the work in-home model which virtually eliminates walk-in traffic for storefront facilities and restaurants.

Targeting at Home Consumers/Businesses

With consumers becoming cautious over the health risks associated with the COVID-19, many people are staying home as much as humanly possible. On the contrary, people are still getting out and taking care of business in a perfunctory manner. You will see landscaping companies driving around servicing residential and commercial lawns. When people walk out of the grocery store, you’ll see them carrying out fruits, vegetables, and stocking up on an assortment of items (especially toilet paper). So you can see our logistics industries are delivering products to grocery stores as normal. Deliveries have increased and employees of your local grocery store chain are working overtime. So much that the demand for seasonal workers has increased significantly and expected to last for a few months until the transmission rate of COVID-19 decreases.

Since people are staying home, your consumer is now primarily at home. If you provide services to businesses, your executives, office managers, and CEOs are more likely to be sitting at home just like you. Prayerfully, the spread of the coronavirus subsides sooner rather than later. But, in the meantime, we as business owners should be doing all we can to connect with our customer base sequestering in their homes.

Mobilize your Products and Service

To keep revenue flowing smaller restaurants need to add food delivery services and advertise delivery to hopefully retain and target their regular walk-in customers. You may not be in the restaurant industry, but it will be good for one to think of creative ways to get your products and services in the homes of your patrons. Reach out to your clients and offer them in-home services. Think about how you can mobilize your business and meet the consumer where they are. Better yet, use a digital marketing strategy to reach people sitting right in front of TVs, laptops, and cell phones.

Here are a few tools that I recommend using to increase your companies market penetration. The byproduct of increased exposure increases customer engagement, which funnels down to sales the more positive impressions put out into the digital world. Here are a few starting points for increasing your companies online visibility:

Digital marketing tools to help penetrate an untapped market

Digital Advertising with Canva

Create a quick  and easy digital advertisement to share on Linkedin or Facebook

Mailchimp – Engaging Online Through Email Marketing

Send out an email newsletter to all of your current and prior customers who visited your business or bought something from you online. It’s a great tool to re-engage your existing audience and draw them to your business.  

Facebook Ads: Targeting Local consumers based on behavior

Create a post on your business page and promoting your product. Follow up with a targeted add to reach consumers within your local community.

Google My Business – Put Your Business On The Map

Beef up your profile with new pictures, add some promotional sales and services to get people engaged. Add pictures and flyers to further pique your client’s interests. Hence, prompting them to call you or visit your website. Remember, consumers are still actively buying products, they are just now doing it from home.

Develop a strong Online Presence

When people turn to Google and search for a service that you provide, is your name listed? How many pages back do you have to go before your company name shows up? If you can find your business name and you are in the facility that services are rendered, you’re not in a good position. If your competitors’ name shows up, but your name does not, you’ll need to consider allocating resources to help you gain some visibility. It’s almost a given that a national brand fortune 500 company will always be displayed somewhere on the 1^st page of google since they spend so much on marketing and developed a strong brand recognition with consumers.  Large companies have immense market penetration but that does have to have an impact on your ability to generate revenue. Surprisingly, it can be the other way around.

Yes indeed, a local small business can compete with the big dogs for business and even outrank them online. Consumers can search for a service that you provide, and view your listing among other local, regional, and national competitors. Seriously!

Improving Google Rankings

Google and other search engines prioritize proximity and your physical location as a ranking factor. So in essence, google shows local businesses before it will show a company that’s across town. When

Google now becomes the tool that everyone needs to use to curtail the loss in their business. Now google rankings are a way to target consumers. What’s the first thing that pops in your mind? More than likely you’ll think of a national brand more often than not. Surely, your company can become a household name with the right strategy to help you penetrate your target market. 

I have mentioned the restaurant industry as a marketing strategy example for the scope of this article, however, our marketing solutions can be adapted to help businesses to achieve greater revenue and market penetration.

If you build your online presence, people will come

Overall, how you build your online presence is through a process called “link-building.” It’s a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to build hyperlinks that mention your companies website online. It can be achieved by listing your company on business directories and posting content on blog websites. The more your name is mentioned across the web, the more you’ll generate what is called “domain authority.” The higher your domain authority increases, the more visitors you’ll see visiting your website monthly.

One of the consistent obstacles that businesses face among all industries is a lack of visibility to consumers. The desire for more revenue, visitors, subscribers, phone calls or leads is directly related to online relevance. If you need some assistance in generating revenue for your company, reach out to us we are happy to help. Contact us to learn how we can help you in your endeavors.