7 ideas that can help any business connect with customers, boost sales, and increase visibility when you can’t physically meet.

With physical distancing being the most effective tool in containing the novel coronavirus, many smaller businesses are seeing a decrease in new and returning clients. This is especially true for businesses who service local clients. What are some quick ideas for boosting your sales and visibility over the next couple months? 

Here are our top 7 somewhat straightforward ideas that you should consider. Each of them can be done as a one off to try and aren’t expensive to set up. If they work for you, they can be repeated or sustained for comparably little extra time. 

If you’d like help with any of these or would like to discuss how one could fit well with your business, let us know!

Idea 1: Host a Virtual Pop-up Shop or Webinar

Remove any issues of being physically present by hosting a virtual presentation of what you have to offer. These can be straightforward to record from your desktop or phone, but they can also be fun and interactive (especially if you invite a small group of people who know each other). Whether you decide to quickly record a video on your phone or you decide to host a tupperware-like party online, people will get a better feel for your brand and your offerings. Bonus: You can record these and repurpose them on another medium, like posting them on your social media account, adding them to a blog post, or embedding them on a landing page.

Suggested tools: Along with an audio and video capable device (which are available with most modern-day phones and desktops) all you need is a service that connects you to multiple people online (like Google Hangouts, Zoom, Facebook Live, and Instagram Live).

Idea 2: Host an Individual Meet and Greet

A lot of businesses can start and grow relationships without ever meeting in person through virtual meet and greets. Advisors/consultants/doctors and others have done well in this space, but so can businesses who sell physical products. Similar to the Virtual Trunk Show concept but focused on 1-on-1 discussions and product ‘interactions’, you can talk about yourself and your brand, your offerings, and answer questions directly. As a quick example, let’s say you sell hand painted bowls (like our recent client Cobalt & Curry): They could video chat with a client, have their products ready to show at any angle, and answer questions without leaving their creative space. This is a great way to earn trust quickly and, if you get a little creative, might even become a new service offering!

Suggested tools: Along with an audio and video capable device (which are available with most modern-day phones and desktops) all you need is a service that connects you to an individual and, ideally, isn’t too difficult for both parties to access (like Google Hangouts, Skype, and Zoom). Facetime is a good option too, but it requires that both parties have an iPhone/iPad or Apple desktop.

Idea 3: Add chat to your website

With all the effort you put into having your website being the go-to place for you to be able to control your brand image, the one thing most websites lack is interaction. Social media offers various ways to interact, but they can (and do) change the rules (and some people completely avoid or limit their exposure to social media). Adding chat to your site makes it easy 

Suggested service: For most websites, it’s relatively simple to add chat via Facebook’s Messenger service to a website. There are many other options out there too and most offer free versions that will work for the majority of use cases. Here are a few to consider: Pure Chat, tawk.to, LiveSupporti, Userlike

Idea 4: Offer gift cards

Whether you sell products or services, offering gift cards for purchase is a great way for others to promote your business for you. Physical gift cards can be designed and sent but virtual gift cards work more quickly and are easy to setup with some platforms.

Suggested service: CMS solutions like Squarespace and Shopify offer virtual gift card options at a minor service premium. NEW for March 2020: Shopify is currently offering gift cards as part of all of their packages!

Idea 5: Start an online shop

Within a few hours, you can work with a designer to create a graphic that can quickly be used on a t-shirt, mug or other promotional product or create some yourself which you can sell online with minimal effort! With all of the drop shipping options, shop integration options, and promotion options that exist (like the Giveaway idea above), this is an easy option that you can add to create another stream of income. Bonus: If you already have a shop, consider adding something with your brand on it (like a shirt with your logo) or designing something new to put on a shirt or sticker that is in tune with the zeitgeist of your targeted persona (like a modern saying or local landmark).

Suggested service: We highly recommend Printed Mint to create customized products and Shopify to build a new shop. Shopify is arguably one of the best and easiest to use online shop creation platforms available and they connect directly with Printed Mint, making this duo a great passive income option!

Idea 6: Try a different social platform

Given the mass audience and accessibility, we all know that we should be on Facebook. It’s the ubiquitous platform for sharing news, videos, infographics, and quotes as well as for interacting with people (via posts and chat). Instagram is another no-brainer for many especially if you have aesthetic content like beautifully shot images, user-generated content, inspirational quotes, or videos and funny or behind the scenes photos/videos (for Instagram Stories). There are other platforms out there that have a passionate audience that could be a good fit, so we recommend trying one. In the US, examples include Pinterest (great for sharing how to’s, visually appealing content, infographics), LinkedIn (great for sharing thought leadership, industry updates and career news), and Twitter (which is good for quick tips, news, fun gifs and links to blog posts).

Boss Level Bonus: Once you are in a platform, share your expertise or pick a related group to follow and start interacting and being social.

Idea 7: Giveaway Alert! 🎉

Grabs your attention, right? Giveaways are a good way to get people excited about what you are offering and, depending on how you set it up, gets them to interact with your brand, can lead to more followers, and can also increase the number of people subscribed to your newsletter... which is a core goal of most businesses, right? One tip is to collaborate with another business to offer a higher value prize. This way there is more incentive to join your giveaway and you get to be exposed to another audience that maybe hasn’t heard of you before!

Suggested tools: You can do this quickly with just a social media account but you’ll get the most out of this if you have a newsletter signup flow. Many companies go all out and offer something amazing (like an iPad) but in many cases something much simpler works perfectly fine (gift card, free service/product from your business, or even branded merchandise).

Bonus: Since content is king, create content

There is an axiom that’s especially true for websites since the advent of search engines: Content is King. Creating content isn’t just helpful to get found via places like Google or Bing, creating good, helpful content also helps with referral from all types of sources (social media, word of mouth, etc). Creating a good blog post, graphic, landing page, video, podcast can be easily repurposed and promoted across several mediums.

Tip: Create a useful download that can be used as a lead magnet / opt-in! This can help you to grow your email list while giving people a great resource!

Interested in discussing any of the above or getting some help? Have your own idea? Please let us know! We like to keep our posts evergreen, so we’ll update this as we consider new ideas that are helpful and relatively easy to implement.