Danny Star, CEO and Founder of Website Depot Digital Marketing Agency, has helped hundreds of small businesses grow and expand.
What must it have been like to be at the top of the horse-and-buggy industry when the automobile was invented?
In popular culture, there’s this idea that one day the horse and buggy were on top, then the very next, the automobile came out. It may seem like those who manufactured the buggy were titans of the industry one day, destitute the next. Indeed, the “creative destruction” of the free market has its casualties — those who were subsumed and replaced by something new.
However, it may not have been like that. It certainly doesn’t have to be that way when your business or the business of your clients is threatened.
The buggy manufacturer could have pivoted to manufacturing tires, dashboards or any of the other hundreds of parts that go into an automobile.
The truth is there’s always something you can do. Even in the face of an economic downturn, like the one we’re in the middle of right now, there are positive steps you can take to help your business, both in the present and moving forward.
Put The Emphasis Where Your Customers Are
A client of ours has been, for years, primarily focused on being a tax and bankruptcy attorney. That’s the majority of her business and she’s very good at it, building an impressive following. However, when the recent crisis arose, it took a significant toll on her practice. Essentially, suddenly, what had been so successful for so long was no longer operable. She had to change quickly.
She did.
She didn’t go out and learn a new kind of law, nor did she change the entirety of her business overnight.
What she did do was change what she emphasized. Instead of spending so much time focusing on letting clients and potential clients know that she was a tax and bankruptcy attorney, she shifted her emphasis to wills and trusts. With so many thinking of their mortality during this current crisis, it was a perfect transition.
We helped her through blog posting, social media marketing, Google Ads and the like. That was a shift we could make overnight for her. Now, she’s “righted the ship,” so to speak, and doing well again.
This may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Truthfully, a seemingly minor shift like this can make all the difference between a business that thrives and one that fails.
Ask yourself: What do people need right now?
For this to work, you have to be as honest as possible about it. If you find yourself saying something like: “Well, they’ll be able to take advantage of our services once the world opens up more” or “once they have more money, people will flock to us,” you’re not really answering the question.
Each of those equivocations and others are rationalizations and an attempt to see the world as we would like versus how it actually is. Your customers and clients are seeing the world (or rather, their world) as it is and making their decisions accordingly.
By being as specific and clear as possible about their needs, worries, fears, concerns and, ultimately, hopes, you give yourself and your clients the best chance for success now and in the future.
New Venues For Established Ideas
You might be thinking: Hey, that’s all well and good for your client, but my business can’t exactly shift to something that might be more appropriate to the moment.
If your company cannot shift to something new, then perhaps the right choice is to look back at what you’ve done in the past. Then, see if something you might not have emphasized in some time could be the key to better meeting the moment.
For example, a client of ours offers psychotherapy services that have healed the minds, bodies and spirits of people in Southern California for more than 20 years.
In those 20 years, she’s written and done so much to help people improve their lives in real, tangible ways. So, during the pandemic, she’s gone to great lengths to make sure that people can encounter her work as well as her expertise in new ways.
That means you can read her work at major news networks, hear it at very influential sites and so forth. In each of those places, she’s said something that’s new to the audience, but not new to her. They’re the same services she’s been providing, she’s just discussing them in a new place for a new crowd. We’ve helped to promote and boost each of these so that her current clients know what she’s doing and prospective ones see how she could help them.
You might think: That’s great, but I can’t exactly get a cable news network to come down to my business. That’s fine. If you have a phone, you can record a podcast or an online video. You can put a human face on your business. You can let people know about what you’re offering, whether your focus is something new or maybe something you’ve done in the past that can help quite a bit now.
Your Business Has A Way To Contribute
That’s true even if it doesn’t seem like it. If you go through what you offer, what you can do, there is something you can do right now to help people’s lives. Whether it’s a podcast explaining your services, a product you haven’t sold in a while or a pivot your business can take, there’s always a step forward. If you’re a marketing agency, one of the best things you can do right now is to help your clients to find how they can best meet this moment.
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