Event Marketing provides a great way for small businesses to connect with their clients, introduce new products and services and attract new business to their sales efforts. However, with the coronavirus pandemic affecting daily life as we know it, social distancing and stay-at-home-orders have limited human interaction, at least for the foreseeable future.
This shouldn’t mean however that business/client interaction should die. In fact, now is the time for small businesses in particular to identify new touch points to reassure their clients that the business continues and showcase any new solutions that they can provide for existing as well as new clients.
Tech tools
undoubtably provide many solutions for small businesses to connect with their
clients. The following are five tech tools
that small businesses are encouraged to use right now to maintain a connection
with their clients:
1. Video Conferencing apps – Video Conferencing apps, though not new, were hurled into the spotlight a few weeks ago when the world suddenly didn’t work as it should. These apps can be used to host events, meetings, training sessions, or even small team meetings. Many of these apps offer free usership up to a point. Zoom for example, offers a 40-minute meeting limit and up to 100 persons free to a meeting. Other options for face-to-face interaction include Skype for Business, Google Hangout and Cisco Webex. Gmail also now offers google meet directly from your inbox.
2. Social Media scheduling tools – Although life has slowed down somewhat, for small entrepreneurs who are involved with every aspect of the business, this could still be a busy period as they work to ensure business continuity. Updating social media platforms can prove to be a time-consuming activity. Utilizing social media scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, can help small business owners to appear more active on social media than they really are. Dedicating one or two hours out of the week to schedule the week’s post frees up the entrepreneur to focus on other critical areas such as distribution and manufacturing that can provide to be a challenge right now.
3. Google Analytics – Especially if you are a small business with a website, Google Analytics is a useful tool to track who’s visiting your website. Google Analytics provides a better understanding of who your audience is, where the customers are and the type of content they respond to. This will help to determine where your marketing budget is spent. And the greatest thing about Google Analytics is that it is completely free!
4. Start a Blog – Blogging is a great way to provide useful information to your clients without shamelessly plugging your own business offerings (even though you should). A blog can either be a stand-alone web page or part of a website. The important thing is that it should be updated often and be written in such a way that it engages your clients.
5. Email Marketing – Email marketing may not sound ‘techy’ enough but it is a critical tech tool for connecting with clients. Your blog, vlog and other promotional information that shared via social media can be sent directly to your email contacts using email marketing tools such as MailChimp and ConstantContact. Most of the email marketing tools also gives statistics and analytics that show how well the email is doing.
Of course, there are many other tech tools and methodologies
that can make a difference in your business’s marketing right now, however these
five are a great start to get you on your way.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to share these useful tips with us. I see immediately where i can start implementing some in my business.
ReplyDeleteGreat! That's the intention, to make the tips useful NOW... please share with anyone else who you think would find it beneficial. thanks
DeleteInformative and provides useful information for small business owners to utilize to reach their customers and potential customers.
ReplyDeletethank you!
ReplyDelete