Monday, March 30, 2020

7 Ways to make your business stay ahead during COVID-19 lockdown

Now that everything across all the countries is locked down because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is no surprise that businesses are facing the brunt of it. It is also causing immense economic loss to most of the countries.

Everyone is looking for ways on how to handle this situation wisely. The entrepreneurs are looking for ways to keep the companies afloat. Although most of the employees are working from home and giving their best yet there are many loopholes. Lack of resources, focus, improper working ambiance, and poor mobile reception are some of the major concerns that employees face while working from home.

All the entrepreneurs are stuffed with questions such as - how to make an effective marketing plan in this situation? How to create a business strategy to combat this difficulty? Well, this article is the answer to your questions. Read to know more about what steps you can take to stay ahead during this pandemic and quarantine period.

What are the steps to be taken for staying ahead of the competition? 

The fact that Covid-19 will not leave us without causing long-term economic and business crises in its wake is very clear by now. To get through this difficult phase and utilize this time effectively, follow the below-mentioned steps.

1. Identify the challenges and improve

Your next question definitely is, how to make a business growth plan? For staying ahead of the competition to grow your business, the first thing you need to do is identify the challenges faced by your company currently.

For instance, Have your orders declined? Are you losing your clients? Not able to find new clients? Are you facing difficulties in communicating, marketing, supply chains or competition in the market? Once you know the loopholes, you can focus more on those areas and make an effective growth plan. Or maybe just consider all the scenarios from the best to worst and prepare yourself accordingly. 

2. Focus on online marketing

Marketing is the key to success. Whether you are running a small firm or a big company, a supermarket, or any other store, this can be the best time to build a strong portfolio of your company. You must be wondering how to make an effective marketing plan? Well, you can shift your services to an online medium to reach your target audience. Also, offerings like discounts, deals, subscriptions, etc., can attract a lot of customers.

Now that everyone is socially distant and is quarantined, it is obvious for them to shift to online platforms. Once all the things become normal, people will still prefer the alternate platforms. Why? Because they are convenient.

3. Adapt to the current situation

With the current scenario, it is best to transform ourselves and our company’s services as per the current situation. If you still rely on face-to-face interaction with your clients, it will surely affect your business in the long run. Whether you follow a business to business or business to customer model, it is better to have online interaction with your clients and customers.

4. Plan on making services flexible

To survive in this situation, it is important to remold your services and products. You might have noticed things taking a big turn post-Covid-19 outbreak. People facing home-confinement will opt for automated services and other relevant products.

Make your services and products flexible so they can be used both during and after this pandemic. Also, marketing your products and services keeping the scenarios in mind will help boost your business.

5. Work on getting leads and customers

You must be thinking why and how will it help? See, now that everyone is quarantined for a couple of days and is struggling to keep up with the current situation, you can utilize this time to generate more leads. This is an excellent opportunity to build a good and strong network for your company’s future.

Your time invested now in the generation of new leads and making new clients will help the company after the situation gets back to normal. Look at it this way, when other companies are facing crises, you will emerge as a confident fish in the market.

In this way, the more leads you have, the better head start you get to fight against the losses and to get back on track. This is another great solution to your question - how to make a business growth plan?

6. Upgrade your communication methods

Loss of communication with employees is another potential threat that can affect your business. As your staff is sitting at home, contacting each other will become a little difficult. Traditional methods like calling, texting, or video call can become tough, specifically with all the home-life interference.

If you are thinking about how to create a business strategy in this situation? Asana or similar software is your answer. You can also create a group on Facebook’s Workplace to effectively communicate with your employees via chats, video calls, and document sharing. Google Docs is the best for collaborative document sharing and editing. Stormboard or Coggle is good for sharing files and brainstorming.

7. Try alternative solutions and make things work

If not already done, the Covid-19 disaster will surely disrupt all your business trips, travel, meetings, staffing, communications, supply chains and most of the things. And the worst part is nobody knows how many days the countries will be shut. You can’t cancel everything and watch your ship sink, right? So why not be creative and find other ways, alternatives, and solutions to keep up with the current situation?

For instance – If you have a meeting lined up with your client, don’t call it off, rather offer an alternative way, say FaceTime, or maybe Skype. In case, the main agenda of the meeting is to tour your premise, simply send recorded footage. Like I said be creative and make things work.

I hope this article clears all your doubts on how to handle this situation and your business. Things may get worse and create a recession worldwide or return to normal within a few days. Nobody knows. We have to buckle up for this ride and produce a firm strategy to become adaptable and flexible even during the worst situations. This a good time to create a strong backbone for your company. You can make your company’s tomorrow better by implementing the above methods today.

Penned By: Anuja Patil

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