The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted lives and economies around the world in unimaginable ways.

What are you doing to ensure that your eruption from the disruption puts you on a trajectory for rapid recovery?

Planning Your Eruption from the Disruption: 5 Things You Should be Doing Right Now:

Assess
Assess your business model and your market and identify the pain points you may be experiencing as a result of the Covid19 Pandemic, but also reflect on the areas of your business that needed attention before a global crisis presented itself. If you are a brick and mortar retailer, is your website up to date and are you offering online ordering? Do you even have an e-commerce website?

Pivot
Perhaps the only thing more important than identifying your pain points, is identifying the pain points your customers and your local community may be experiencing. Think outside the box and determine whether you can serve their needs in some capacity other than the way you normally do.
Here are a few examples I’ve seen that may give you some ideas:
A restaurant that converted into a corner grocery store, selling fresh produce and prime cuts of meat to their community.
Locally, there is a company that makes uniforms, now making machine washable face masks, and is supplying essential businesses locally, and offering their products to consumers online, nationally.
Our firm is offering free consulting services to startups and small businesses adversely impacted by Covid-19. (sign up at https://blacknox.com/)

Engage
Whether your business is currently operating normally or not, it is imperative that you engage your customers and prospective new ones regularly across social media channels. If you aren’t posting something on social media daily, your customers will assume you are closed and may even wonder if your business is going to survive the temporary closure. The options are endless. The important thing is that you keep the audience engaged. If you weren’t doing it prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, you should be doing it now, and should continue on an ongoing basis. Additionally, if you are actively open for business, you might consider a modest digital marketing campaign to help spread the word and build momentum. When launching digital ad campaigns on platforms like Facebook or Google AdWords, it’s wise to start with a small budget to test and optimize your ad creative, messaging and targeting before blowing your budget on ads that don’t convert. It’s advised to A/B test multiple versions of your ad to see what performs best. Once you hone in on the sweet spot, create multiple versions of ads or even multiple campaigns so that the audience doesn’t get fatigued by seeing the same ads day after day.

Plan Your Eruption from the Disruption
Regardless of whether your business has remained open through this health crisis or not, there is no denying the fact or escaping the reality that this pandemic has caused a major disruption to life as we knew it, and when this is all over and done, there will be a new normal. Covid 19 has also slowed us down from our normal pace and given most of us a chance to pause. If you aren’t taking advantage of the time you’ve been given to complete projects and tasks that have been languishing on your to do list or master a new skill, your wasting time and a valuable opportunity. At the very least, you should emerge from this with an updated and optimized website. If you don’t already have an e-commerce website, it’s time to get one built.

This is also a good time to revisit your business model and your marketing strategy, plan a marketing and promotions calendar or post-pandemic special event. Determine if any course corrections, enhancements or pivots can help drive your Eruption from the Disruption and put those plans in motion.

Execute
It is imperative that you put your plan into action and execute your strategy methodically. Even if your business is closed, you should be spending a few hours a day doing something your business will benefit from. For you maybe that’s working on social media engagement, starting a Vlog, improving your website, planning a marketing calendar or taking an online course on digital marketing.

Whatever plans you make and actions you take to emerge from this, keep in mind that consumers and communities remember who stood by them when they were down, and if you are able to cater to their pain points or pay it forward in any way right now, they’ll go out of their way to support your business when the New Normal takes shape.

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