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Showing posts with label business survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business survival. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Business Survival Tips During Lock-down

 

Man wearing a dark jacket and a gold blue wrist watch holdng a business newspaper.
Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lock-downs appear to have forced many small business owners to think outside the box. Business survival has become the buzzword and many small business owners are scared and hugely challenged. Not to worry though, the pandemic will pass away at some point and life will return to normal. In the interim, people must think about how to remain in profitable business to keep body and soul together. Here are a few things you can do to remain in business against all odds.  
 
Take Your Business Online

If you factor in that people are not at liberty to freely leave their homes as they like these days, anyone who wants to do good business must focus more on creating a strong digital presence with online shopping options. Taking your business online is the smartest thing to do when human interaction is severely restricted as characterized by lock-downs. How do you do that? Firstly, you need a professionally designed, functional and flexible website for your business. Host it with a credible web host to allow it to do good business online. If you are in product sales, you must decide at the outset what should be your sales channels and how you can through these channels target your customers. Work out reliable delivery methods for your products and the payment methods available to customers for these products. Be sure your website is optimized with SEO techniques for local searches. The bulk of your customers are more likely to be local because of the lock-down. Optimizing your website for local searches is what helps people in your locality searching for business to locate you easily.



Don’t Ignore Security

You must think deeply about how to handle physical and cyber security for your business. Safety is generally of major concern to most people in times of lock-down. You do not have to panic as most people are. Just calm down and think more constructively as against desperate thinking. If you take your business online, your website must guarantee adequate cyber security, especially when it comes to protecting personal data and payment options/information. If your customers are confident that you are offering proper security and safety, they become more confident shopping with you even amidst huge challenges occasioned by severe restrictions.

Have a Workable Plan in Place

In times of huge business challenges as in the case of a lock-down, a new business plan becomes inevitable.  This is justified by the necessity of the lock-down. You just have to get things done better in some other ways, isn’t it? You can decide on a flexible business plan incorporating your operational model, financial plan, promotional and sales goals. Determine well in advance, your competitive advantage and challenges. Identify your top competitors and potential suppliers/ business partners in addition to situating your target market correctly. Most importantly, your plan must have clear goals, targets and priorities that are in tandem with your planned budget.

Explore Market Opportunities

Even with the lock-down, the opportunities for good business are still there. Research the market well to determine what is hugely in demand even with the lock-down. Taking your business to customers and serving them where they are is good. You must explore ways to do this profitably. There are many business lessons to learn because of the lock-down. How you use these lessons to work out survival strategies for your own business depends on how well you understand the market opportunities available to your business. The more you understand these opportunities, the better the chances of your business surviving the lock-down difficulties.  

Promote and Sell More Online

If you are a marketer, you are not in business if you are not marketing 24/7. The lock-down has forced many more people to resort to shopping online. This is why you must have a credible and authoritative digital marketing presence to serve customers better. Experience from the lock-down has shown clearly that you can promote your business and sell more online even under severe restrictions occasioned by the lock-down. If your business has sufficient flexibility, you can continue to serve customers, promote your business better and sell more products despite the inclement business environment occasioned by the lock-down.