Tips on How to Keep your Small Business Alive During the Pandemic
Move Products Online
- Move everything possible online. If you are an author, make sure your books are available in a digital edition. People will have more time on their hands to read, therefore your digital book sales should increase. Why not offer a discount during these unprecedented times.
- If you have a physical store, what products could you sell online? At the moment, there is no disruption to mail delivery services to get your goods to your customers. You will need an e-commerce store on your website to be able to sell your items and upload descriptions and pictures. There are different possibilities here. If you don’t already have a website, consider Shopify. If you have a WordPress website, then the Woo-Commerce plugin will be all you need. There are also some awesome WordPress themes such as Flatsome that will make your online store look amazing..
No Time to Create an Online Store?
If you are an artisan, think about selling your products through Facebook or Etsy. For Jewelers, artists, potters, and for any creative, Etsy is ideal.
A business page setup on Facebook where you can answer messages, advise delivery and take orders via messenger could be a viable alternative to an e-commerce store.
For the long term marketing of your business, it’s not just how to keep your small business alive during the pandemic but how to pivot for the future.
Change Events to Virtual Events
It s probable that no physical events will take place during the month of April 2020 and possibly longer. As we speak conventions and conferences are being cancelled. So what can you do?
With the magic of the internet and video conferencing tools, many events can be transferred to online events. A subscription to Zoom, Go To Meetings or even Facebook Live are all ways to keep your events on schedule.
If you have a service like personal training, cooking school or yoga with a membership, you can always create a private facebook group and give the same lessons in video format.
Classroom Teaching
If you are a subject matter expert, you can conduct the training over the internet using a combination of video conferencing and powerpoint slides.
If you have a whole program you can use a platform such as Thinkific,Teachable, Udemy or Learn Dash to set up all your courses into segments. These platforms have the ability to create quizzes, insert videos, and give out certificates. Everything you need to replace your physical teaching.
Online Workshops
It isn’t necessary to have a full blown e-commerce store for online workshops. You can sign up for Paypal to take payments and then create a paypal button on your website to link to your paypal account.
Once a client has paid for the workshop through Paypal you can direct them to your sub-domain where the workshop is housed or if it is a one-on-one workshop online, then you can advise availability through a calendar link such as Calendly.
Create Gift Certificates
With online tools such as Canva, you can easily create a gift certificate for future purchases of your product. The free version of Canva works just fine. Don’t forget to advertise you have gift certificates available to redeem at a later date.
Update your Marketing Tools
With time on your hands, here are a few more tips on how to keep your small business alive during the pandemic.
- Make e-books from your blog posts to give to your clients to read (free or paid). The Designrr software is very easy to use and affordable
- Create videos using your cellphone. Use a Fiverr editor to get them looking professional.
- Launch a podcast using SoundCloud or Libsyn hosting platforms
- Create a blog post if you haven’t done so already. Don’t know how to blog, go over to our sister site, Fabulous Fempreneurship and check out our courses.
- Update your website.
Create a YouTube page to host your videos or podcasts. If you want to keep your videos only for your membership, then upload to Youtube and mark “Private” instead of public and then create a video page on your website to link to your YouTube channel. (hosting a video on your website takes up too much bandwidth and slows down your website). Either Vimeo or YouTube are your best bets.
Learn a New Skill
With extra time on your hands, perhaps now is the time to learn a new skill. One of the great sites is Coursera where you can update your current skill set for a very low cost and during the pandemic many of them are free. These courses are all online and provided by Universities across the world. The courses are high level university level courses, and many offer certifications.
Checkout Small Business Funding Solutions from your Local Government
Since this is a global pandemic, many countries realize with a full scale lockdown other than essential services, small businesses will not make it through this health crisis unless they are helped by the Government. Check regularly for updates because every week new programs are added to keep small business alive.
We hope these tips on how to keep your small business alive during the pandemic give you some creative ideas. If you do need help with any online launching services, get in touch. We are glad to offer you reasonably priced services to get you through this difficult time.