It’s been a tough year for small businesses.  If you have survived, a massive congratulations to you, we know it’s been a hard slog!

Most small businesses, in order to survive, have moved online to sell their products or services. And (if only it was that simple) along the way, more tweaks have been made, perhaps your business has had to try new paths and directions in order to survive. 

And all that carefully planning at the end of 2019/start of 2020 – just blown out the window.

With all that, its often the best strategy to just do the basics and ignore anything that you see as a cherry on top.  This year, try to stop doing that.

How to build a stronger website

1. Write a blog on what its been like or your best selling product or your favourite quote of the year. Or even our favourite season. Make yourself more personable to your customers, and if you pick a hot topic, your article will be picked up by organic SEO.
2. Work on your titles, descriptions and improve your organic SEO. Yes, it can be tedious, but it can really help when potential customers are searching for products or services like yours.
3. Remember – you are an expert – in whatever field that might be. So write about it – be your own guest blogger, or interview someone in your team!
4. Learn how to make small changes to your website yourself – change your sliders, find out how to add a money off voucher which you can display on the front page.  Feature your favourite product or service.
5. Add an email button to your website and then link it to your (free?) email marketing platform, such as SendInBlue or MailChimp. Send short, targeted, relevant updates to your customers.

Plan.. and then plan again

Create a really flexible plan about what you want to talk about each month on social/web and email marketing.  Flexible being the key word – with lockdowns it could all change – but at least if you have a subject or a strategy it will make creating content easier.

Revisit your customer service

Fine tune your customer service.  Why not use a few of our mystery shoppers – this can be just as successful to complete online as it is in person.  Ask our mystery shoppers to feed back on the service they received in detail, perhaps make sure one needs to return something or has an issue with their product or the service, and find out how easy it is for them and the reactions they get.  We’ve all got black listed retailers who we swear we would never buy from again – don’t be one of them.

Be Local

Be local.  If 2020 has taught us anything, its that more consumers are “buying local” – be that a product or service.  So engage with your local community and see if they are another target audience for you.  How do you reach them?  Find local community business groups and local influencers to help spread the word of your business.

Give back

We know, your pockets are empty, but are they really?  Giving back can give you a real sense of achievement and satisfaction, and it reflects so well on your business.  This could even be mentoring someone, so it doesn’t have to be hard cash, but its worth giving something back.  It makes you feel great and helps someone else, and if 2020 has taught us anything, looking after each other is paramount.