No matter where you’ve worked in your life, making sure you have customers to service and money coming in the door is always a top priority, especially for local business owners. Local businesses are always finding ways to make sure they will continue to have customers and sometimes wondering where their next lead will come from. Some years there’s too many, and other years you’re wondering how you’ll get by. It’s a struggle literally every person in the workplace has faced at one time or another.
The point is, no one is immune from shifts and fluctuations in the economy. During uncertain times like this when many businesses wonder how they’ll be able to make ends meet because of the COVID-19 crisis, we’re facing. It’s a scary time for many. But look at it this way – needs don’t change for many. People still have their hearts fixed. They’ll still have issues that come up because they’re unpredictable.
Especially as more people are spending time at home, they’re actually spending more time on their phones and computers. Marketing your company now is the perfect way to set your company up for success in the future.
We’ll start with a real-world example. Let’s say you’ve been driving down the road and absentmindedly tune out the commercials on the radio. That includes a commercial for Bob’s Plumbing. A couple of weeks later, your sink is clogged to the point where no amount of plunging, snaking, or Drain-O can clear it out. So you go to Google and type in “plumbers near me”. You see a few names, but then you recognize Bob’s Plumbing because you heard it on the radio. So you give him a call.
That’s the power of marketing. In this case, it was a combination of both traditional and digital marketing—traditional marketing started with the radio ad and then SEO or PPC brought in the customer to the point of purchase.
Marketing helps to build your brand. This also includes soliciting online reviews, which also helps to build your brand. When you have a good brand that is trusted by your customers, that helps solicit new customers. Building your brand authority is never a bad thing and should be continually worked on overtime.
Marketing requires lots of different approaches to be successful. It includes basically anything that promotes your business. But some of these efforts take time to build. SEO is one of those things. It’s what we do specifically for businesses here at Green Stick. So we know first hand the work it takes to get a business ranking on page one. But the ROI of page one rankings cannot be understated. More than 80% of searchers never go past page one on Google when looking for a product or service they need.
Understanding that digital marketing takes time can be easy in concept, but difficult in practice. It’s hard to wait months to see rankings climb waiting to see increased rankings. Because of this, SEO compliments other marketing efforts really well—like PPC—that can immediately start to get you clicks online. But often, like many things, the payoff at the end of the journey for these efforts that take time are well worth the wait. And the results pay off for months and years to come.
Marketing can be seen as something to cut out when times are financially uncertain. But this is the time to keep your foot on the gas and continue building that brand recognition. Often your competition will pull back, which sets your business up for success now and in the future.
It’s hard during times of economic downturn and uncertainty to know what to cut back on or what really needs to be done. These are never easy decisions to make. And while cutting back on marketing can save a few dollars in the immediate needs, marketing is actually helping your business because it brings more people to your door when they need your services.
Bottomline, we’re not sure what will happen with the economy over the next few months. Many business owners are having to make very difficult decisions just to remain afloat right now. Marketing does take time, and it can pay off big time in the long run. Do what you can, follow our COVID-19 business updates to learn about action items you can take to keep building your business and its online presence, and stay strong to weather this storm.
This website uses cookies.