How can businesses survive Covid-19

How can businesses survive Covid-19 and hit the deck running when the coast is clear?

Coroavirus arrived more or less overnight and has changed the business landscape for ever.  Almost all businesses have ceased trading due to the lockdown (cafes, cinemas, retail, events, sports clubs, restaurants, nightclubs), any business where there is a non essential social gathering.

When the lockdown is lifted and social distancing restrictions lifted, what will the world look like.  Will your business survive?  How will the economy in the UK look?

The answer is if you are serious about your business – YOU DON’T!!

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced many of us to stop and think about the way we live and work and how we run our businesses. How do we run our teams from our offices?  Can we run our businesses remotely and online?

However many businesses have adapted.  TV adverts for banks have now incorporated the virus to reinforce a positive message.  How can you adapt your business, whether you are a global airline like Virgin, or a dog walker.

Consider What The World Will Look Like In 6 Months

So when this is all over, how do we hit the deck running? In practical terms , we don’t! In reality, we don’t take our feet off the ground! We don’t stop running. If you are serious about your business, you work harder now that you have ever worked in your life. We keep running.  However for some companies, this is not possible.  Consider team-building events or exhibitions at the Excel or NEC.

If you want a 12-week holiday, the chance is your business will not be there when you wake up in 3 months. Just because we are all working remotely doesn’t mean we can’t keep communicating, sharing ideas, seeking opportunities, talking to clients and keeping our staff engaged while we wait for the UK to heal itself.

So, being positive, what can we do? How can we help ourselves? How can we ensure we recover and thrive after the virus? Here are a few tips to help you beat the virus.

Research Grants

Grants and loans are being made ready for businesses and employees. Funds are there to help, however, understanding issues like this on the .GOV website is never easy. Unravelling the advice and financial help and how it applies to you can be, and is, a maze. However grants for small businesses are coming online, and business loans are now being made available and terms imposed by banks are being regulated by Government.

Evaluate & Reduce Overheads

The day’s of large plan offices in the city may be a thing of the past.  Now you understand funding, evaluate your business. How bad is it? And be honest! Do you offer essential services that the public will need right now? If not, can you adapt, as the virus becomes more vigilant and lock-down continues? Key advice right now it to preserve cash, cut orders, slow/stop supplier payments, stop rent payments, cancel Business Rate DDs, and focus on credit control. The Government support on workers & wages is there to help, as is the deferment of Vat & July tax payments.

Meet Demands

Can you change your business offering? Restaurants becoming takeaways. Gin producers making hand sanitiser! Has your business the opportunity to change before closing it down in line with Government legislation? If no hope exists, shut down, hibernate and plan for the future.  If you are adapting your business to support the fight against coronavirus, this can be used as a positive PR message you may wish to use to boost your brand.

Talk

Talk to your customers! Explain how the virus has affected you and what you are doing to either hibernate or diversify. If you are hibernating, tell your clients of your plans moving forward. If you are diversifying, tell them what you are planning, which may be community projects, such as restaurants offering take-away meals for essential Key Workers, or charity donations of stock and products you can no longer sell.

Look to your competitors

Keep your clients close but keep your competitors closer. Before you plan your own marketing look to your competitors. Are they still marketing? If they are, you cannot afford to stop. If they are not, it”s your opportunity to dominate areas of the market. With less competition search engine results pages, and PPC (pay per click) will be cheaper. This is now a great time to create more traffic whilst the cost per click is lower.

Plan & Change

When we come out the other end of these troubled times, the business landscape will have changes that we may not have foreseen. There may be new opportunities. So, now is the time for some essential “house-keeping”;. In the coming down months do something positive to get ready for change. DO NOT stop marketing your business. If you stop marketing, you lose momentum. Once you stop, people forget you. Keep waving the flag, and wave it hard!!

• PLAN – Write a marketing plan for your business, scheduling how you are going to move forward, when the pandemic is over. Plan from today, with activities through hibernation, culminating in your re-emergence and look to take some market share.

• DATA – Built a new database, or cleanse your existing database, to include clients, suspects and prospects. With a good database, plan direct mail campaigns to stay in touch.

• PR – Think about your profile, how you can communicate good stories about what you are doing, what you plan to do, and make sure your audience sees these news items online, in the press, on your social media and on your web.

• SOCIAL MEDIA – Social media activity can be very powerful right now. Don’t fall silent. The whole world is living on its mobile following social media trends and looking for news. Chefs are conducting cookery lessons on line. Fitness gurus are running classes on line. What can you do to inform, entertain, and raise your profile? You have a chance to be a resource to your wider business or local community.  Many people have forged a career as a social media influencer or content creator.

• NEW PROPOSITIONS – Now is an ideal time for business to develop new products and propositions. Be bold. Think outside the box and be different. What will the market need?

• RETARGET – COVID-19 won’t be here forever, so invest in the future and retarget. When life returns to normal, business will quickly pick up, and by setting up retargeting now, you can take market share in your industry.

• EXECUTE – Some of these measures to keep your business active could become a big part of your marketing plan moving forward. Customers are expecting disruption to the way we do business, so why not plan to de different and different gets noticed!!

Lastly, stay focussed and positive. Businesses can survive and beat Covid-19 with a little planning and doing things a little differently.  New businesses and opportunities will grow from this pandemic.  Can yours be one that will grow, or do you need to re-build your company to meet the new world and economies.

The reality is that there will be a recession to come from this, what will this mean for your business and how do you plan in advance to prepare.