Coronavirus: 6 Steps To Take For Your Small Business



It’s currently not business as usual: the UK is on unofficial lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, and if you own a small business you may be wondering how you can act to protect your company. Use these six tips to help you work out exactly where to go from here and what should be your plan going forward.

  1. Assess all possible outcomes – and what you can do to stay afloat

The current situation is unprecedented, but it’s important not to be paralysed by the potential impact on your business. Plan out all possible outcomes and devise ways to stay operating through difficult times.

As a small business ourselves, we’ve had to think creatively about how Jamii might be affected by everything and what we can do to protect ourselves, all the while continuing to deliver on our mission. We’ve created this e-book that lays out our strategy for dealing with COVID-19 – use it to inform your own decisions and stay on track.

  1. Cashflow is more important than revenue

Depending on the nature of your business, it’s almost certain your revenue will take a hit. Assess where you can cut or minimise spending and carefully forecast where costs might come from in the near future. If you have suppliers, Google their policies on coronavirus (most have them now), give them a call or drop them an email (this is probably better as many are now working from home). Speak to them about how costs can be deferred, what minimum payments must be made or if their services can be temporarily cut.

There are also ways you can incentivise customer spending:

Launch a gift card

Particularly if you are a bricks and mortar business, this is a good way to encourage customers to keep shopping with you. Selling gift cards will provide you with cash, while ensuring customers will be back to spend once the lockdown is over. Consider discounting them and making them digital.

Allow pre-orders

If you’re having difficulty with the supply chain or deliveries, allowing pre-orders could be a good option. Customers can either pay the full amount or just a deposit, and it’s useful for businesses who have cash tied up in stock.

Offer discounts

Discounting, selling products in bundles or offering free gifts with purchases will help you move stock that might be unlikely to sell in the coming weeks. Look at what hasn’t been performing well recently and what is unlikely to be a priority for customers in the near future.

  1. Consider pivoting (your marketing strategy, at least)

Just as the UK goes into lockdown, sportswear brand Nike announces a 36% rise in global online sales, proving the market is still alive and kicking (and we’re all exercising indoors). There are potentially endless ways for your brand to be adding value to consumers even right now – think hard about what your target customers are doing, what they’re thinking and how you can be helping them.

If you’re a bricks and mortar business, a simple way to pivot your business strategy is by moving your presence online and selling there. Gym brands could create at-home workout videos, yoga teachers could venture into leading classes online, and make-up brands should consider creating tutorials. There’s a massive opportunity here to invest your time in educational or entertaining content that goes a long way to increasing your brand awareness, even if not directly boosting conversions.

We recently spoke to Masibu Manima, founder of Translate Culture, who advised that we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of brand-building during this time. Read the blog post here.

  1. Collaborate

Now more than ever, we all need each other’s support, because everyone is in the same boat. Work with other small businesses to cross-promote one another, run giveaways and introduce yourself to new audiences. 

  1. Make the most of social media

As we talk about in our blog post with Mas, social media ads are incredibly potent for helping you reach your target audiences. Facebook Ads allows you to retarget customers with adverts after they have previously interacted with your content, whether on social media or on your website. You can upload a customer list to the platform to promote targeted messaging to users already in your audience – and then use ‘look-a-like audiences’ to reach people with similar interests.

Make the most of online content to engage your audience. Entertain your followers with live videos on Instagram or Facebook, fun polls or Twitter threads – everyone is looking for entertainment right now and this is a huge chance for you to get in front of your target audience.

  1. Be where you’re needed

Putting content in front of your target audience on social media platforms is one thing, but when it’s actually time to buy, most of us head to Google or Amazon. So show up when people are ready to buy by making yourself present on these platforms: Google Shopping aggregates search results across shopping websites and allows you to be found as soon as a user types a keyword in the search engine. It also promotes you across many of Google’s platforms, such as Gmail, Youtube and Google Searches. 

Consider creating an Amazon or Etsy seller account so that you can be found online in places beyond your own website. These are trusted websites that receive millions of users a day and so will guarantee you additional traffic to your products.


[]