How has COVID-19 impacted your small business? What can struggling small businesses do during times of economic turmoil? What can you do moving forward? What does the post-COVID world look like for entrepreneurs? These questions are crucial for you to ask during a time like this.
Over 100,000 small businesses permanently closed soon after the COVID-19 lockdowns.[i] Of the small businesses that did survive, many experienced considerable layoffs and other financial difficulties. The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly had a significant impact on all of our lives and businesses.
With our changing world comes the need for careful planning to adapt and be successful. This article presents several marketing and business tools that can help your small business survive the COVID and post-COVID business world:
- Having a strong social media and internet presence.
- Providing the ability to work remotely.
- Having the capacity to evolve and meet customer needs and preferences.
Having a Strong Social Media and Internet Presence
In a technological world where people stay home, having a strong social media and internet presence is crucial for small businesses. More consumers are using the internet to find and buy products and services, and there has reportedly been a 300% increase in online sales due to the pandemic.[ii] To survive as a small business owner, you must use social media marketing and have a potent website to reach stay-at-home consumers.
Social Media Usage
Social media usage has increased dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. Due to the lockdowns and business closures, people had more free time at home, so they turned to social media to fill their time. Kantar, the world’s leading data, insights, and consulting company, found that young people in the US claim they’ve been using social media significantly more since the pandemic. Figure 1 shows that the percentage of young people that report using media platforms more often now than before the pandemic, is extremely high.[iii]
So what does this mean for small business owners like yourself? An increase in social media usage means there’s an increase in product, service, and business exposure available on these platforms. Utilizing the popular apps listed in Figure 1 is the perfect opportunity to project product awareness and sales, which could save your company during these difficult times. Social media advertising is the future, and you need to adapt to it now.
Business Websites
During the lockdowns, many retail stores and service businesses had to temporarily close. Even now, many of these businesses have capacity limits to enforce social distancing and are experiencing low in-store purchase numbers. Businesses need a strong internet presence so that consumers can continually make purchases from the safety of their homes.
Having a strong internet presence requires businesses to have professional websites that can “retain existing customers while attracting new customers in the process.”[iv]
Marketing professors Rebekah Bennett and Mark Rosenbaum conducted a study and found that a business’s internet presence is crucial to its survival before and after the pandemic. The studies show that even before COVID-19 struck, “70% of all consumers began their consumption experiences by engaging in webrooming.”[v] Webrooming is when the consumer looks up the product on the internet before going to the store to view the product in person.
Their research implies that consumer purchases are primarily determined by your small business’s internet presence. So what are some qualities of effective business websites? Bennett and Rosenbaum claim that descriptive words, pictures, videos, and audio elements can make your websites more effective and therefore drive higher business profits.[vi]
Having professional, effective business websites is a cost-efficient marketing tool for your small business to sell, inform, and gain additional customers. A strong internet presence is crucial for small businesses to survive in our pandemic and post-pandemic world.
Working Remotely
Covid-19 forced many businesses to readjust as employees worked from home. Businesses with the ability to work remotely were able to carry on with their work and continue to make profits. Small businesses need this flexibility if they want to survive in the business world. As you will see in this section, the ability to work remotely increases business continuity and preparedness in addition to business and employee efficiency.
Business Continuity and Preparedness
The ability to work remotely is a powerful business tool to help combat even the most extreme circumstances. An article provided by SyndiGate Media states, “taking steps to enable remote working will ensure some level of business continuity.”[vii] This means that businesses can continue to work and prosper if and when remote working is required during unprecedented times.
You never know when a crisis will strike. None of us could have predicted that COVID-19 would have such a profound effect on small businesses. However, it did, and we should utilize it as a learning opportunity to implement the needed changes to ensure we’re prepared in the future. One way for your business to accomplish this is by implementing remote working tools and software to allow for remote working in the case of another disaster.
Implementing a cloud-based system can allow your entire company to work from home. This not only allows all employees to work remotely when needed, but also stores the data in case critical business information is hacked, manipulated, or destroyed. A cloud-based system will enable you as a small business owner to be more prepared for any problem thrown your way and ensure continuity in your business.
Business and Employee Efficiency
Oftentimes, a business is only as good as its employees. With that being said, businesses that want the ability to work remotely also need reliable employees.
A recent study in the International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues examined businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the business processes of these companies affected their financial performances. One of their findings is that “reliable employees are needed so that the business process can be carried out properly.”[viii]
In other words, if your small business doesn’t have reliable employees that you can trust to work remotely outside of your supervision, your business may suffer and lose efficiency. Hard-working employees are necessary during times of economic turmoil, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and are imperative to ensuring that work still gets done with remote online working. Even after the pandemic, employees can continue to work from home if they’re sick or on vacation, which subsequently increases your business’s efficiency.
Many businesses will be working remotely from now on or will have the ability to do so in case they need to in the future. As a business owner, you must have this capability and the right employees to get the job done to ensure business continuity, promote business efficiency, and process a business successfully.
Evolving to Meet Customer Needs and Preferences
COVID-19 has reshaped the way people respond and react to advertising and marketing efforts. Customers have different preferences and needs that small businesses need to learn to adapt to. The topics in this section show how recognizing and utilizing customer preferences, trend opportunities, and needs can lead to success for your small business during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Customer Preferences
Customers have developed different preferences due to COVID-19 in both the advertising messages they like to hear and the social media platforms they prefer to use.
Victor Snyder, a consulting business coach, found that during this time of difficulty, people want to see uplifting, inspiring content from businesses. He states:
“Your brand should support inspiration, demonstrate how you are giving back to the community, and emphasize positivity. Use positive and light colors, cheerful music, and themes that indicate hope and a sense of future possibilities.”[ix]
Small businesses need to recognize customer trends and adapt their advertising strategies accordingly. An effective strategy includes recognizing where to target advertising and marketing campaigns. One example of this can be seen with TikTok.
Trend Opportunities – The Rise of TikTok
A study conducted by eMarketer indicates a significant rise in the popularity of the social media platform called TikTok. Figure 2 shows the unique visitor growth on TikTok at the start of the pandemic.[x]
Figure 3 shows a large increase in the minutes users spent per month on TikTok due to the 2020 March lockdowns.[xi]
Many small businesses have concentrated advertising efforts on this app due to its high popularity and ability for customers to interact with them. Moving forward, popular social media platforms such as TikTok will continue to be an excellent way to reach out to consumers in your marketing and advertising efforts.
Small businesses like yours need to constantly be aware of changing customer preferences. Recognizing trends, such as TikTok’s rising popularity due to COVID-19, can help you increase your brand awareness and inform you where you can get the most success. Doing this is a prime example of utilizing customer preferences from the pandemic to accomplish your business purposes.
Customer Needs
As mentioned previously in this article, more customers are turning to the internet to make purchases. This shift indicates that customer’s need businesses to provide the ability to make online purchases.
Rebekah Bennett and Mark Rosenbaum’s study indicates that most people are no longer shopping at indoor malls but rather “opt to shop online or in open-air, lifestyle-shopping settings.”[xii] This trend occurred before COVID-19 even struck and has increased since the pandemic due to fears of the virus. As a result, it is unlikely that businesses with stores in shopping malls will have much success now or even after the pandemic is over. Therefore, small businesses should invest their money into online websites and social media platforms rather than brick and mortar stores.
In addition, because customers now require businesses to have a safe place for making purchases, small businesses like yours need to recognize and accommodate the customer’s needs. Recognizing customer needs is essential for small businesses to gain and retain customers.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has significantly impacted the small business industry and requires small business owners like yourself to adapt and implement change to survive. Having a strong social media and internet presence, creating the ability to work remotely, and evolving to meet customer needs and preferences are the most helpful marketing and business tools you can use.
Implementing these tools in your own business can help prevent it from suffering like the 100,000 small businesses that permanently closed due to the pandemic. COVID-19 is shaping the future in all aspects of the business industry. The tools in this article will help your small business prosper during the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic business world.
[i] “6 Ways Small Businesses Can Market Themselves in a Post-COVID-19 World,” Insider.com, Insider, June 26, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/small-businesses-marketing-covid-19-2020-6.
[ii] Richard Gerrettson-Cornell, “How Digital Marketing Will Change Post-COVID-19,” elearningindustry.com, eLearning Industry, December 27, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2020. https://elearningindustry.com/advertise/elearning-marketing-resources/blog/how-digital-marketing-will-change-post-covid-19.
[iii] “COVID-19 Barometer: More than Half of Millennials’ and GenZ’s Household Incomes Impacted.” Kantar.com, Inspire Growth, April 23, 2020. https://www.kantar.com/Inspiration/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Barometer-More-than-half-of-Millennials-and-GenZs-household-incomes-impacted.
[iv] “A Covid-19 Survival Guide for Small Businesses.” Bizcommunity.com, Cape Town: SyndiGate Media Inc., July 27, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2020. http://erl.lib.byu.edu/login/?url=https://www-proquest-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/other-sources/covid-19-survival-guide-small-businesses/docview/2427371691/se-2?accountid=4488.
[v] Mark Scott Rosenbaum and Rebekah Russell-Bennett. “Editorial: Service Research in the New (Post-COVID) Marketplace.” Journal of Services Marketing, 34, no. 5 (2020): 4.
[vi] Rosenbaum and Russell-Bennett, “Editorial,” 5.
[vii] “A Covid-19 Survival Guide.”
[viii] Widarti, Desfitrina, and Zulfadhli, “Business Process Life Cycle Affects Company Financial Performance: Micro, Small, and Medium Business Enterprises during the Covid-19 Period.” International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 10, no. 52 (2020): 212.
[ix] Victor Snyder, “How COVID-19 Has Changed Social Media Habits.” business.com, August 10, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2020. https://www.business.com/articles/social-media-patterns-during-the-pandemic/.
[x] Debra Aho Williamson, “US Consumers Are Flocking to TikTok,” emarketer.com, Insider Intelligence Inc., April 27, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2020. https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-consumers-are-flocking-to-tiktok.
[xi] Williamson, “US Consumers.”
[xii] Rosenbaum and Russell-Bennett, “Editorial,” 3.