Brainstorming Your Move to Digital

Whether you’ve been self quarantined all month or think it’s all over blown, there’s no doubt COVID-19 is having a massive effect on how small businesses operate day to day. A high number of Fort Worth restaurants have shut down their dining rooms, moving to curbside pickup and delivery options. Meanwhile, West Palm Beach has joined Bethesda and Rockville in declaring a State of Emergency after cancelling events like ArtFest, impacting hundreds of local craftspeople and artists.

Our mission at White Hound is to help small businesses grow. Despite the unknowns and fear surrounding how our favorite local shops will continue to operate during the coronavirus scare, we do believe it’s possible. The key will be shifting existing services to the digital world. 

Understanding the reason you offer the services you do and why your shoppers love you will help with this transition. Spending some time prepping for the future and the change that is most likely on its way can position your small business for a time where in-store traffic is at or near zero. We understand how hard it is to focus on the future with the problems we’re currently facing, which is why we went ahead and put together a list of potential ideas on how to sell your services and products online as well as how to stay in touch with your fans, customers and clients.

Packaged experiences

The smart delivery services, like Favor, are transitioning to more than food. If you’re a bookstore, you’re now competing even more with Amazon. It’s time to create a package that taps into what people love about your shop. If it’s the aesthetic, create packaging that matches. If it’s the incredible tea you serve people while they sit and read in your shop, include a tea bag or two with the ordered books. Add extra value that allows your shoppers to bring the memory of your store home with them. 

This also works for a travel agent. Instead of selling trips that may need to be rebooked, sell “at home vacation” packages. Create a package of inexpensive, fun items to break up the monotony of being at home, like a blow up palm tree and a board game or coloring book. Then include a coupon for post coronavirus use. This builds good will, increases the chances of a future sale, and allows you to keep generating some income during a time where the trip buying process is a bit of a mess.

Online classes

If you’re a gym, school, or business that helps with physical fitness, this should be your go to. There’s a significant number of apps out there to partner with your website so you can create an online class and keep members getting what they typically look to you for. Walk them through the exercise or do them together. Be creative with your at home workouts. If you feel like finding an organized time is too difficult, you can sell a recording of the workout and make it available at any time.

By the way, this works for all you local restauranteurs as well. Have you thought about cooking classes? Teaching your loyal customers how to recreate your signature dishes provides not only a brief break from the flavorless redundancy of frozen foods, but also serve as a reminder to us that no one can do it quite as well as you.

Virtual Check Ups

As a physician, physical therapist, dentist, chiropractor, or potentially even athletic coach, you may be afraid that a quarantine will bring in-person visits to a screeching halt. Fortunately, there are a number of people in your industries right now helping people through Zoom and FaceTime. While you of course won’t be able to perform manipulations, dental procedures, or actually hit golf balls at the moment, you can potentially use these tools to diagnose an issue and tell your client how they can be working on it at home. 

We have physical therapist clients that have been offering this service for nearly a year, as well as two golf coaches who started using FaceTime to analyze clients’ swings when they are out of state. It may feel weird at first, but being able to bill for a full lesson or check up will be a lifesaver, not to mention the benefits for your client! 

Social media “stores”

Ecommerce is in full effect these days. However, there are plenty of artists and craftspeople who move their inventory too quickly to keep an online shop up to date. A great work around is using social media stories or posts to alert your followers of different products that are being offered. Simply post the product, have your followers comment “sold” and then bill them through a service like Paypal, Stripe, or Venmo. 

Video Series

People love free education. Youtube is an entire generation’s way of learning these days. Create an informal video series on what you know best. If you’re a chef, teach people how to cook better. Show them knife skills, tips for making the best enchiladas, or talk about how to pick out the best ingredients at the grocery store. This is easily translatable to any field or industry. Find information people want to know, even though it feels extremely basic to you. Then shoot a quick video on your phone. 

Side note: if you have access to a professional videographer, use them. However, if we’re planning for a possible quarantine, you need to be able to keep content going and while an iPhone video isn’t amazing quality, it accomplishes our main goal. We’re looking for content first here. 

Back to the point - you have a few choices with this video. You can post it on social media, send it in an email (more on this in a minute) or place it on the website. These will help you not only stay in touch with current clients and fans, but also help grow your reach. 

Free is always better, but many of us are willing to exchange an email address for access to something valuable. If you put the video on the website, you could ask for an email in exchange for access to it. 

Blog series

All hail the blog!

Blogs show your company’s voice and expertise as well as social media, but are actually more important. They can boost your website’s organic ranking on Google (the spot in search results your website sits at), which gives your small business a better chance at being found. 

We get that blogging can feel like a time suck. Especially if you’re trying to write the “recommended” 2,000 to 5,000 word post. Our tip: don’t write that many words. Forget the myth; It’s more important to consistently write and post content, even if the post is only 500 words, than to have one or two 2,000+ word posts. 

If you’re not into creating a video series, blogging is a viable substitute (although you can definitely do them both). You can write five or six blogs on the same ideas you would have focused on in the video series. A golf pro can write a series on putting, including the new rules about anchoring and how to read a green. An author can write a side story, giving one of his or her characters more depth. A coffee shop could do a series on the flavors associated with beans from different areas around the world.

E-newsletters

An e-newsletter (email newsletter for the uninitiated) isn’t a new or novel idea, but you’d be surprised how many small businesses don’t actually have one. It’s a great way to connect with your most loyal customers and clients, providing them updates on what you’re doing, tips related to your industry, or a number of other ideas. They’re perfect for staying in touch and providing discounts. You can build the list from online orders or opt ins like the video library we discussed above.

An objection we at White Hound often hear is how time consuming e-newsletters can be. Small business owners tell us they simply don’t have the time to keep emailing people over and over. We highly recommend using a service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact (though Mailchimp is our favorite) to automate your email process. Set up multiple emails at once, then, after taking the time to write one email, your service sends it out as many times as needed. You can even have steps to the automation process, guiding people further through a sales funnel based on their responses or actions.

Ebooks

A downloadable pdf, also known as an ebook, can be a useful way to get emails and generate attention. All you need to do is create a one or two page “book,” in a similar fashion to your blog. Offering this “book” will give your fans content to dive into while at home and hopefully provide something they can take action on. Suddenly, people are staring at your branding or thinking about how you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread for giving them this break from the boredom of social distancing. 

A chef could easily create a small recipe book consisting of low ingredient, quick to make delicious meals, while a gym or physical therapist can put out a handout on the topic of different home workouts. A yoga studio could put together an ebook on different meditation techniques, and a clothing store could create a style guide. The possibilities are endless!

Online Communities

If you’ve seen any of Facebook’s recent advertising, you know that they are pushing “groups” hard. It makes sense, considering social media is all about connecting. Between private and public groups, you can create an opportunity for conversation with your fans, clients and customers. These conversations provide information, build rapport and continue a sense of community, all around your brand. Building authentic interactions during this time will create fans and customers who buy from you for life. Start a group with a specific goal in mind and let your followers know. From there, follow their lead.

Wrap Up

These ideas can be both exhausting and daunting. Unfortunately, the truth is that we are entering a scary time. The economy for small businesses is going to be hard. However, we need to stay positive and recognize we are being given an opportunity. It may not be one we are excited about, but it’s a chance to set our businesses up for growth in the future.

Our recommendation is to not overwhelm yourself. Don’t try everything above. Find one or two ideas that fit you and your small business. Make the idea authentic to you and do it well. If we take the steps to move our businesses in a direction they haven’t been before, it could only benefit us when things do return to normal.

As a company, we felt like creating and sharing this list was our duty. Marketing and advertising is our expertise, and we want to help any way we can. These ideas are all doable by yourself, without us. 

Of course, we also know that you are the expert at what you do and may not feel comfortable implementing them alone. If this is the case, it would be our pleasure to partner with you. On that note, call us or message us today for either a free strategy conversation or to discuss making these ideas a reality.

We’d also ask that if you found this list to be helpful, please share it with others like you. White Hound is hoping to create a conversation in the small business community, one where we all can take part and provide each other with as much guidance as possible.