5 Smart Ways to Grow Your Business During the Lockdown

Grow Your Business

Source: Pixabay

Did you know that you can still grow your business during the lockdown? Yes, you can, even amid COVID-19, international trade challenges, the protests, lootings, shootings, politics, and all the chaotic events of recent.

Doubtless, these events have impacted the lives and livelihoods of billions of people, including small businesses, one in four of which are at the brink of permanent closure, but it need not put you entirely out of business.

And although unemployment checks and government-backed stimulus packages are contributing to keeping individuals and businesses alive, there are steps you can take to make your business not only survive, but thrive.

In this post, I’ll share five (5) smart ways to grow your business during the lockdown. These ideas will work best for businesses that can run online or remotely, but the principles can be broadly applied to any business across different verticals.

Here are:

5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Business During the Lockdown

How to Grow Your Business during Lockdown #1: Work From Home

There have been protests calling for an easing of lockdowns and reopening of the economy. Certain states in the US that heeded may be experiencing a resurgence of Coronavirus cases, as daily infection rates soar.

Work From Home

Source: MSNBC

The chart above shows new reported cases by day in Arizona with new cases as of June 23rd climbing more than 15x that of April. Texas, California, Florida, and 16 other states are also recording a spike in new cases.

As a result, observers are predicting more lockdown measures may be enforced to contain what they term the second wave of the pandemic. This may mean more business closures, quarantine, etc. Now is the time to start taking your business or the major part of it online so you can continue to work from home.

How to Grow Your Business during Lockdown #2: Keep All Communication Channels Open.

By taking your business online you will be able to reach more customers. You can boost brand awareness, drive engagement, and improve local and global reach by going online, e.g by signing up for Google My Business, which can help you convert searchers to customers.

You should also create a business website so you can drive targeted traffic to your dedicated site. With a website, you can get more qualified leads, create sales funnels and better convert leads to paying customers. You can link it to your social media accounts with over 3.84 billion monthly active users.

A March 2020 survey found that 43.1% of respondents will use Instagram more if confined at home. Your customers could be there waiting for you. And did you know that over 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily? You can share a simple post or Stories on Facebook, Instagram, even WhatsApp to let your customers know you’re (still) open for business. They allow you to add stickers, hashtags, etc to make your Stories more engaging. Whatever you do, keep all business communication channels open.

How to Grow Your Business during Lockdown #3: Either Lead or Follow the Trends

Several consumer behavior changes have occurred since COVID-19 hit. One of them is an increase in and preference for ecommerce orders, especially for groceries. As a result, businesses are paying more attention to ecommerce. Big players like Shopify are also strengthening their position and forming new alliances with Facebook and Walmart.

Another noteworthy social media trend is that more people are spending their lockdown time watching tons of YouTube videos. So, how does this help you grow your business during lockdown? By finding out exactly what types of content people are consuming.

Did you also know that more people are showing heightened interest in home-based niches? Historically, how-to-videos do well on YouTube garnering the most views in many categories. So, when people spend more time on YouTube, they aren’t necessarily watching movies or documentaries.

They are learning about DIY home repairs, how to start a home garden, how to start an online business like dropshipping, how to set up sales funnels, how to run successful Facebook ads, etc. Create informational how-to videos, and a Youtube channel and use it to drive traffic to your business.

How to Grow Your Business during Lockdown #4: Keep Advertising and Marketing Your Business

According to FEMA, 40% of small businesses fail following a natural disaster, with one in four of them closing within a year. COVID-19 has affected many businesses leading to the loss of over 40 million jobs in the US alone.

With millions of people claiming unemployment checks and government palliatives, now looks like a really bad time to keep marketing and advertising your business. However, this could not be further from the truth.

Take Billy Gene’s student Randall for example.

Randall’s company builds, wait for it, $35, 000+ swimming pools!

Doesn’t sound like what you should be selling during quarantine right? Wrong!

See Randall’s Facebook ad results:

Keep Advertising and Marketing Your Business

Source: Billy Gene

People are spending more time at home and spending some money to get or fix their swimming pools is a great idea for those who can afford it. So, be like Randall and keep advertising and marketing, it can help you to grow your business during lockdown.

How to Grow Your Business during Lockdown #5: Address Current Pain Points

The most important thing to help you grow your business during lockdown is to offer products or services that address people’s present pain points. Remember that; products addressing people’s present pain points. We can create an acronym for that and call it PaPPPP, PaP4, or something.

So before you run off like Randall and start running paid ads, it is important to align your products or services to people’s present pain points. So, start by identifying those. What are people in your neighborhood currently complaining about? Do you have or can you create a product or service to fix that?

You can also conduct keyword research to find out trending searches and create content that addresses those needs. If you’re a content creator you can create valuable courses that teach people how to make money working from home, how to work out and stay fit while at home, how to cook a new meal, how to start a home garden, how to… You now get the drift? That’s one smart way of growing your business during lockdown.

Conclusion

These are unprecedented times requiring fast thinking and ingenuity to stay afloat. These tips can help you grow your business during lockdown either now or in the future.

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