How to make your small business popular as lockdown restrictions lift

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Social distancing is good for health but bad for business. From innovating business models and staying relevant on social media, here’s Click Office’s guide to helping your business stay afloat now that lockdowns are lifting.

In these trying times, it is a definite worry for business owners if they will be able to recoup the losses felt over the last few months of lockdown. With new infection clusters already being seen around the world, lockdown 2.0 is a very real fear for businesses. Once you ensure that your business, staff and customers are all following the local health and safety advice you can move on to implementing some of these techniques to stay relevant and popular with your customers in the coming months.

Stay relevant

If there is one thing that everyone has been doing during lockdown, it is using their phones to browse social media. Your audience is poised and waiting to engage with content, so use this to your advantage. However, now is a time to think outside the box and engage with people on a level deeper than “We’re all in this together, so why not buy a new washing machine?”. Try creating content that will make people laugh.

Take the microbrewery Evil Genius as an example. Located in Philadelphia and owned and operated by Dublin native Trevor Hayward and Philly local Luke Bowen, the lockdown hit them hard. After bars and restaurants shut, about 60% of their business dried up overnight. This was incredibly damaging and they knew they needed to do something about it.

Acting on the world’s obsession with the overnight Netflix sensation Tiger King they created a beer and named it “Felt Cute, Might Feed My Husband to a Tiger IDK”. This 4.2% Pale Ale is a not-so-subtle nod to a character in the documentary Carol Baskin, who is rumoured to have killed her husband and fed him to the tigers at her large cat sanctuary, a claim she vehemently denies. The beer was an instant social media hit, and due to the brewery offering takeaway options, it has brought in some much-needed revenue.

Be transparent

Honesty and trust are so incredibly important to consumers right now, which is why you should keep them up to date on everything that is going on with your business. Keep in regular contact with your customers, either via social media or newsletters, informing them of any changes in your hours or opening days, any updates with delivery options or delays and information on social distancing measures for when you do re-open.

Make sure you remember to update your hours on your Google My Business account or Facebook so that anyone checking your opening times won’t be disappointed.

Get online

Businesses like tutors, teachers, therapists and personal trainers have gone digital and moved their sessions online so that they can still bring in some much-needed cash. There are plenty of free tools that you can use to stream videos like Google Hangouts, Skype or Zoom and offer your services remotely.

For companies that can’t jump on the live-video bandwagon, why not try pre-recorded videos through the Vimeo platform which requires users to pay a small fee for the video before they can watch it. This could be useful for a salon if they created a how-to video for touching up roots at home or if an accountant records their screen while showing users how to file tax returns.

Instant video options, like Instagram Live, are also a great way to access all your followers and to showcase any new products or services that you are or will be offering.

Promote gift cards and discounts

This is an excellent time to offer discounts and promotions, which will encourage your customers to engage with your business. For example, gyms waiving sign-up fees for new people joining, retailers offering free shipping or discounted prices, or small businesses offering discounts on their services if customers can show a receipt for their purchases from other small businesses in the area.

While there is little you can do to make absolutely sure your business will survive lockdown and will thrive as lockdown lifts, there is still hope that these little changes will have a lasting positive impact. Good luck!

Why work with Click Offices? Click Offices has been finding office space for Dublin and London based businesses since 2014. We offer a free search and support system for our clients and provide exceptional service throughout. Need an office? Just click!