Marketing Tips for Essential Businesses During the Coronavirus

4 Marketing Tips for Essential Businesses

While many businesses are struggling to keep their doors open amid the mass closures and stay-at-home orders, other businesses have continued operating — falling under the essential business category (to which we say: Thank you!).

While this has allowed this group of businesses to stay open, it’s also presented its own set of challenges on how to navigate operating during a pandemic.

Essential businesses have had to determine how best to keep employees and customers safe while adhering to new (and often-changing) safety guidelines on top of the usual bevy of challenges running or operating a business entails.

One of those usual challenges that have been amplified is marketing. Marketing your business can be difficult at any time — and especially during a pandemic. So, we’ve put together some quick tips to help you market your essential business during COVID-19.

1. Check Your Local Listings

If you’re an essential business, consumers are going to want to know a few things right away: if and when you’re open being the first, and what your hours of operation are. Chances are, you have adjusted hours right now. Make sure your local listings have the correct hours of operation and any additional information that might help consumers — like if you’re offering curbside (if applicable for your business).

2. Regularly Update Your Website

Your website is the hub for your business and where people are going to go for relevant updates and information. Any relevant updates should be included on your website, and you should be adding these as often as needed. Your website is also a great place to add what you’re doing to keep employees and customers safe. You can add a new page and even call this out at the top of your site so customers can easily see your safety precautions.

You can also include any specials you may be offering or incentives for customers to continue doing business with you on your site.

3. Don’t Ghost Your Social Sites

Aside from your website, your social sites are another place consumers will go to look for real-time updates from your business. A local restaurant near me is doing an amazing job with their social media sites right now. They’ve put together daily “quarantine kits” of food, wine, and toilet paper that patrons can order via a DM on Instagram (as well as through the regular avenues like calling or online orders). Once they started running this on their social sites, they saw an influx of orders and were even able to open their other location that had been closed for nearly a month. They post constant updates and re-share posts from community members who have ordered their kits.

While situations are changing so rapidly, your social sites give you a place to post immediate updates so you can keep consumers up to speed on what’s happening with your business.

4. Adjust Your Marketing as Needed

Essential businesses are in a unique position because they’re still open and running, just with modifications. This means that you can continue running your marketing, but it may need some adjustments as well. Messaging, offers, and images should be audited to ensure everything is aligned with your current business operations and that your campaigns are sensitive to what’s going on around us.

While you’re focused on serving our community members, our team at LOCALiQ can help you keep on top of all the marketing and ensure your campaigns are running smoothly. We’re your one-stop-shop for all your marketing and advertising, from PPC, media planning, brand development, websites, and much more. Reach out today to connect with one of our local marketing experts.

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Stephanie Heitman

Stephanie is the Senior Managing Editor for LocaliQ, where you can find her sharing tips, insights, and stories about how marketing helps local businesses grow. When she’s not researching the latest and greatest marketing news and updates, she’s probably watching reality TV with her husband or playing with her two pups.