10 Ways To Improve Your Business
During Lockdown
Many of us are stuck at home, wondering what steps we can take to stay productive by improving our business. Being away from the hustle & bustle means now’s a great time to clear our task lists, finally tackling some of those jobs we’ve put off too long.
Or perhaps with fewer distractions (like those pesky folk called customers) this is a perfect chance to take an in-depth look at our business and get a fresh perspective on how we do things & where we’re heading.
1. Stay Up To Date With Covid Lockdown Information
First thing’s first, you can check if your state is in lockdown by visiting the government’s Covid Restrictions Page. You may also want to check the locations of your suppliers & customers too.
It could also be worth visiting the government’s website for Covid Business Financial Support. All states are offering assistance in the form of payments, schemes & incentives to qualifying businesses.
2. Cut Your Business Expenses
If your sales have slowed or stalled due to the lockdown, cutting expenses may be essential. Even if not, doing so will satisfy you that you’re taking as much pressure off as possible.
Common ways to do this include consolidating insurance policies & bank accounts, reducing inventory levels, using mobiles instead of landlines, making employee healthcare changes, re-negotiating with suppliers and saving electricity.
3. Double Down On Debt Recovery
Another way to allieviate pressure is to collect on those owing you money. Being in lockdown gives you the perfect excuse to remind slow payers that terms are due.
Many debt recovery agencies exist to help small businesses, but an extra phone call in a politely insistent manner may be all that’s needed to secure your funds.
4. Focus On Employee Management
Now is a great time to solicit your employees’ advice on how to improve your business, to take a fresh look at their role and decide if they’d benefit from further training or new tools to improve their performance.
Your expectations of them (and vice-versa) may warrant re-defining, and it may be an ideal time to discuss permanent work-from-home arrangements while the lockdown gives everyone a mandatory taste.
5. Touch Base With Existing Clients
Not only is reaching out to your existing customers a great way to stimulate future sales, you can also hear first-hand how they’re being affected by the economy.
Understanding their changing needs is vital to satisfying them, and with so much economic turbulence many industries are being thrown into dramatic upheaval. Businesses who grasp the implications of these changes soonest will be in best position to profit by them.
6. Gather & Examine Feedback
Another advantage of contacting clients is discovering where you can improve from the all-important perspective of those paying your wages, or even uncovering where you’ve let them down in the past.
Conducting an online survey via a platform like Typeform is an easy way to secure priceless feedback on a larger scale than individual phone calls allow, and the anonymous nature of a questionnaire that doesn’t require a customer’s name or details may also yield more honest feedback.
7. Improve Your Social Media Presence
Increasingly businesses are reaching customers via social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram, so now could be great opportunity to re-examine the type of content you post, which platforms you post it on and how often.
A smart tactic is to examine the social feeds of those subscribed to your page or channel, noting other pages they visit, the types of content they Like or Upvote, and which brands they gravitate towards.
8. Launch A New Marketing Campaign
Breaking into a new market can be a time-consuming endeavor, but finding yourself at home with extra time can be a great incentive to start. Particularly when the current state of the economy renders being overly-reliant on existing customers extra risky.
Our Marketing Lists cover all Australian industries, and we can even run your email campaigns for you.
9. Improve Your Website
Purchases made online have skyrocketed thanks to Covid, both in the B2B & B2C space. So if you have an online store the population of your state being stuck at home spending more time online is a potential opportunity to increase your traffic & online sales.
Even if you don’t sell online, with person-to-person contact prohibited your website is an even more vital tool for informing the public of what you offer, so taking a fresh look at your design & content to deliver a more professional visitor experience may be worthwhile. It may even be worth updating your older content, or removing it to keep the site feeling fresh.
10. Re-evaluate Your Business Plan
Updating your business plan on an annual basis is probably a good idea, but at a time when lockdowns are rendering life so uncertain it makes even more sense to respond to rapidly changing markets by re-evaluating your objectives, and how you plan to accomplish them.
This is the perfect time to ask some big questions:
- Would it be advantageous to have staff work remotely on a permanent basis?
- Can we shift any remaining elements of our business online?
- How different will our market look post-Covid, and how do we prepare for that?
- Will we need to target a different audience?
- Does our marketing message need to change?
As you can see there’s numerous ways you can work on your business to make positive use of any lockdown-enforced downtime.
For a free consultation with one of our experts to discuss how you can boost your marketing results,
please give us a ring on 1800 961 500.