6 Ways To Work On Your Business At Home During COVID-19 Downtime

SPOILER ALERT — We are a digital marketing agency, so this is all digital marketing stuff

This is a tough time for everyone, and something completely new to us all. It is very easy to get caught up in the panic that is shared by all of our brothers and sisters around the globe.

While we practice responsible behavior and social distancing, this also provides a bit of quiet time that we may not otherwise have.

As a digital marketing agency, located in Indianapolis, IN, we certainly understand the stress of not being able to work at the office. We work with companies in many different spaces of all sizes, and every business owner is feeling the stress.

Let’s try and make good use of this downtime and knock out some items that tend to get left on the to-dos for days, weeks, months, and dare we say… years?

When we all come back from this, and we will, we can and should be ready to go!

So what can I do to work on my business while in quarantine?

We have created a simple list of things you can do. From letting clients and potential clients know you are available, to some basic housekeeping of your website and online presence. Enough of the blabla, let’s get to it, shall we?

1. Status update / Local listings if applicable

   There are a couple things here. First, if your clients or potential clients look for you or your services online, make sure they know if and when you are available. Update your hours and availability on Google My Business, Social Media, your own website, yelp, etc..
   Next, spend some time making sure your local listings and citations are up to date. Many times, local businesses get caught up in the day-to-day and overlook this. Local SEO is not a myth, we’ve seen it.#waterworld

   And if you don’t have listing in your local directories, now is the time to get them set up.

2. Site design or theme update

   It’s very likely that your website is built on a CMS like WordPress, or an e-commerce platform like Shopify, Magento, or one of many others. It’s often difficult to schedule time to update the look and feel of your website. Even doing simple theme or plugin updates can be hard to schedule, because, what if there is a conflict with the new code and the site breaks?!! Now is the perfect time for these, especially if things are a bit slow at the moment. Some updates take very little time to execute, but do require that you have time to sit down and plan it out. Take this time to tackle some of these housekeeping tasks.

3. Content

   Content writing gets pushed aside so often, but it is so important. This is your potential clients first (and maybe only) impression of you or your business. So set aside some time to review your web pages, punch up that copy, and sell the sizzle!
   This could be product descriptions, pricing, specials, etc.. if you are an e-commerce business. Or, if you are a service provider, take this time to evaluate your current pricing, packages, or overall descriptions of your services offered.
   Do you have questions your customers often ask? Add that information to your website. Have you looked at your competition lately?

4. Social Media (setup / update)

   It’s unlikely that your business doesn’t have some kind of social media presence. But, take and audit of all of your accounts. Are they all synced up with one another? Is the branding consistent across all platforms along with your website and other marketing materials? Are you posting on them regularly? It can be hard to find time to keep them updated, but there are great tools out there like Hootsuite or Sprout Social that can help automate some of this and schedule future communication. Think of these automation tools as meal prep for your business communication.

5. Run some ads (search or social or both)

   Now that you have spent some good time updating everything and you’re happy with it, perhaps, plan some ad campaigns for now or the near future. Even if you aren’t quite ready to run them, this is the perfect time to slow down and plan. The type of business you are in will ultimately help determine what type of ad makes sense. Consider Google Ads, Microsoft Ads (formerly BingAds), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Each platform has several advertising options from which to choose.

6. Analytics

   If you are doing any of the above, this is a must. There are a lot of options out there for tracking your website performance. The free, no-brainer, is Google Analytics. I know, you probably already have this set up. Or do you? If not, do it. If you do, are you tracking conversions, e-commerce transactions, 3rd party campaign performance? There are many other must-haves, but this is the simplest to set up and may be all you need (for now) to get a clearer picture of how all the above is working.

This is by no means what we consider to be a complete list. But, everything we have mentioned above can be done by you or someone on your team, and for the most part, without purchasing subscriptions or expensive tools. However, if you run in to any snags, or have questions, feel free to reach out to us any time. We are happy to help.

Want to add to our list? Just add a comment below and we will take a look and possibly add it to the list.