Is Your Business Corona Ready?
PREPARE, ANTICIPATE & SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY.
Online shopping has surged recently, and it will likely continue to do so as more and more people choose self-isolation. Online retailers like Amazon are going to face operational and distribution challenges, but if conditions worsen, then this may be the way supplies and service are purchased.
So this begs the question; Is your business ready to face a transition that could see you temporarily transacting online, 100% of the time?
The next and the far more critical question is that if people don’t want to travel, or meet you face-to-face, to avoid the possibility of contracting the Corona Virus, then how are they going discover your products and services in the first place?
Most businesses have a weak digital presence that never gets found organically, and there’s no lead-flow & generation strategy, which secures next month’s revenues if people change their buying habits?
WHERE IS NEXT MONTHS REVENUE COMING FROM?
Although this article sounds pessimistic, no-one has a crystal ball, and the Coronavirus may not eventuate further than it already has. However, the panic and media attention around the Coronavirus has begun affecting many businesses.
Construction companies can’t source their supplies from China, manufacturing companies will experience the same issues once local supplies have depleted, the elderly are avoiding concentrated areas, and therefore those retailers who rely on their spending are struggling for revenue; the list goes on.
This article has been designed to create awareness, to be prepared for several months of having your employees working remotely, your traditional turnover to be diminished and to be shifting budgets into a tactical online marketing push.
Things may get tough and let’s hope that it’s all just exaggerated hype. However, seizing the opportunity to transition into an online stronghold in your industry, certainly won’t hurt.
Here’s the full article.
Thinkroom’s recommendation is that you download our e-book so you have visuals to reinforce our message, in particular in reference to our marketing and advertising suggestions.
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GETTING YOUR BUSINESS CORONA READY
In this short e-book we’ll explore:
- Transforming your offline business to an online powerhouse.
- Capturing new revenue streams.
- Restructuring so your employees can operate from home profitably.
- What an economic slowdown might really look like.
- What will happen if transportation stops? How industries will adapt?
- Your backup plan framework.
- This book is designed to help you pivot your operations into a business that can survive rapid change without going completely overboard.
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CHAPTER 1.
ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN
Regardless of whether the Coronavirus compounds into a global lock-down, the hard-fact is that panic has already set-in. Media attention and hype alone will drive an inevitable economic slowdown, and the question is, how slow will it become?
We’re watching politicians reassure communities with live press-release updates, stating that our countries are the safest places to be and that our medical institutions are the best equipped than anywhere else globally.
This may be true, but economically, we are all going to face financial aftershocks that are about to shake our revenues. If you run a scenic bus tour business, there is a high chance that a good portion of your customer base is the elderly. You will have realised several weeks ago (March 2020) that not only has your tourism customer base diminished, but your elderly customers have stopped visiting you as well. Your customers are now cautious about leaving the safety of their homes, knowing they’re the most vulnerable & susceptible to this outbreak. Your revenues are suffering, and you are wondering where next month’s income will come from.
If you run a sizeable construction development, there’s a high chance that you’ll be facing supply issues and your completion dates are likely to experience delays.
If you’re an investor within that development, you may encounter the developer becoming insolvent due to the lengthy holding costs before completion and settlement.
Delays would mean that sales agents won’t be claiming commissions, while employees and contractor requirements will also be of less demand. Then there’s the courier driver, who’s been delivering fasteners to the construction site; He no longer has anything to deliver.
All-in-all, no matter where in the chain you are, there could be a time where you, your employees, and your loved ones will need to consider that staying at home may be a wiser decision than claiming the next pay cheque. Streets of China are empty, which may become our reality too.
For further research and supporting articles, view the links at the bottom of this e-book.
A pause in our economic flow, even if it’s only a few months, will change the business landscape with an effect that may be greater than Coronavirus itself.
So this begs the question: How is your business going to survive a temporary economic slowdown? A transition from an offline business to a dedicated 100% online offering, because consumers become wary of visiting you in person?
We may not have all the answers in this book, but at the very least, we’ll have you creating a backup plan that may just become critical in your business’s longevity. In any case, the world must go on, and in every tragedy, there’s always opportunity. When the earth shakes, and a city is brought to its knees, solicitors will be needed to manage insurance disputes, there will be conveyancing requirements, commercial litigation, all of which opportunist law-firms will be ready to capitalise on.
This means that if Corona-Economy hits hard, and businesses aren’t anticipating how the next few months might unfold, many of your competitors may be caught in the crosshairs.
They’re unlikely to pivot fast enough to survive the rapidly evolving wave of consumer behaviours. After all, who would want to leave their homes to buy supplies if there was a medium to high chance of contracting the virus?
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CHAPTER 2.
REVIEWS & FAKE NEWS
We live in a world of Fake News & Reviews. In fact, we are all sheep following each other around with very little thought as to “why?”.
We assume that if that product is good enough for this guy, then it must be good enough for me too. This is exactly how we purchase online. We see that 362 people have given that toaster a 4.5 star-rating and therefore, it must be a safe purchase.
#1
Google reviews are the first thing your business needs to focus on, and you’ll need a strategy to entice your customers into giving you this valuable social currency. There’s almost nothing more important than your reputation, as it will follow you around forever.
Let your Google Reviews be the most prevalent digital asset that you have, and watch the search engines immediately improve your rankings.
#2
Secondly, both individuals and businesses leave digital footprints. Each online post, each conversation, follow, like, or interaction equates to what they call breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are a trail of clues, or data-points evidencing what you have been doing, what your interests are, or how your business operates. A conscious breadcrumb strategy is valuable, setting you up with digital assets that last you a lifetime.
You can also keep an eye on competitors by tracking their breadcrumbs and closely watching who the CEO’s are connecting with. If your breadcrumbs don’t paint the rosiest of pictures, then hiring a PR agency might be an important part of your online digital strategy. For every negative article that’s been posted, you need a dozen positive articles to compensate.
Now, this next bit is important – Don’t fake your reviews!
You can hire a PR agency to write wonderfully fabricated stories about you and your business, but when it comes to reviews, Google will know if you hire someone to post 10,000 fake ratings.
Fake news stories are common – even politicians seem to get away with it ????- but don’t mess with Google, they’re smarter than you and they’ll penalise anyone who isn’t being honest.
The plus-side of not faking your reviews is that a rating of 4.1 stars look more believable than five stars anyway. You’ll look more trustworthy to consumers.
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CHAPTER 3
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
We’ve all heard that the key to securing real estate is location, location, location. If you were going to establish a retail store, in most cases, you wouldn’t be leasing the cheapest stand-alone shop available out in the burbs. You’d be positioning yourself in a busy metropolitan environment, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, in order to capture high volumes of foot traffic.
However, for some strange reason, people regularly make this mistake with their websites. They buy the cheapest hosting, meaning that their servers are positioned on the other side of the world, creating a slight delay for users. It might not seem significant, but users are impatient and they demand convenience.
Speed is one of the ways Google measures your relevance and it’s not too dissimilar to someone having to drive for 20 minutes out to your standalone store in the suburbs. It just takes too long.
The busy metropolitans of consumers can be paralleled to the volumes of people spending their time on social media platforms. Here you’ll find all the foot traffic you need, and in fact, you can even choose which consumers to approach based on their interests. You don’t have the full overheads of a shop, and your doors can be open 24 hours a day without the worry of being infected by Coronavirus.
The tricky part is how best to approach consumers in amongst the jungle of other businesses competing and screaming for their attention. Assume you do find the magic formula, locking-in an attentive target audience. Your next challenge will be how to take them on a buying-journey that builds trust, creates a feeling of safety, and compels them to purchase from you.
Lead generation is the most valuable service on the planet to most organisations, but if your website isn’t converting, then there’s little point of driving volumes of traffic to it.
Here’s the conundrum: How will you find out if you’re converting, if you’re not driving any
traffic to measure?
Bite the bullet and drive traffic to your website using pay-per-click advertising (PPC), knowing very well that you’re probably not going to convert as effectively as you could. Consider your spend as research. You’re paying for data at this stage and having previously connected Google Analytics to your website code, you can measure user behaviour.
The advertising world isn’t a simple one. So unfortunately, there isn’t a magic lead-gen formula that applies to all businesses. However, here are a few tips that might help.
TOO CLOSE
You’re too close to the business – Don’t DIY. Your message needs to be simplified for the mind of someone who doesn’t understand the intricacies of your products.
1, 2, 3, TOO MANY
A common marketing technique is to write headlines considering the “1, 2, 3, TOO MANY” technique. Write your headlines in three words or less, where possible. Keep it simple for our simple minds.
LESS IS MORE
The more you write, the less someone will read. Just create enough curiosity for someone to want to learn more.
EMOJIS
Did you cringe at our overuse of emojis earlier in this E-book? ???? So did we, but the use of Emojis in social media posts are known to increase conversions dramatically.
Facebook ads headlines that included an emoji had 241% higher clickthrough rates than the same ads with no emoji.
NUMBERS
Moz Blog found that headlines written with a number are 36% more likely to have people click on your ads.
ODD NUMBERS
People trust headlines with odd numbers rather than even numbers.
INSTANT UNDERSTANDING
Aim for instant understanding. If your viewers can’t understand what you’re offering within a split second, they’ll scroll straight past you.
The above is a guide, but as mentioned previously, you shouldn’t DIY your marketing unless you’re a creative or sales genius. Instead, hire an agency that pitches you on lead-gen as their first priority, rather than wanting to paint you pretty pictures.
If your agency wants to sell you radio or TV advertising, understand that although these suggestions might have merit, the agencies get compensated exceptionally well for offering these unmeasurable methods. Choose methods that can be measured, tested, calibrated, and tested again.
Once you’ve created a lead-gen source that’s effective at a spend-per-lead that you’re comfortable with, It’s time to draw your attention to your website. Review your Google analytics and measure your call-to-action, such as your buttons.
Why is Amazon using that specific shade of orange for their buttons? Is it by chance? Did a graphic designer just choose that shade because they thought it looked nice? Many organisations spend a lot of time and marketing budget on research that proves the best conversion rates and the colour of buttons make a significant difference.
If you’re thinking that you’re now going to choose Amazon-Orange for your business buttons, then that’s not necessarily going to work. A button is only as good as its environment.
An orange button has high contrast in most environments, but if your brand was orange in the first place, your call-to-action might be lost. Your branding and environment will dictate which colour works best for you. Do your research by making multiple landing pages users to experience and then measure which is most successful.
Build an ecosystem that consumers trust. You’ll need to study trust-elements, you’ll need to understand usability or at the very least, your business will need to hire a web designer who’s emotionally intelligent.
Here are a few resources that you might find interesting to study.
https://blog.close.com/lead-generation
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CHAPTER 3.
NEW REVENUE
With all of this in mind, the way we do business is likely to shift, and there’s an opportunity for those who can anticipate. As Wayne Gretsky’s famous quote goes,
“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
If you are clever, then perhaps you’ll be able to uncover new revenue streams for your business. Re-open 2004’s Book, titled “Blue Ocean Strategy” which may help you discover a market space that is undeveloped, and untapped by competitors.
You’ll learn:
• Not to spend your energy trying to outperform competitors.
• How to establish new markets eliminating your competitor’s relevance.
• Your new offering should add more value.
Blue Ocean Strategy suggests that you’ll have more business success by establishing a blue
ocean, rather than competing in the red ocean. Traditional markets are flooded, margins are small, and competitors are scrapping.
In this current Corona-Environment, you may be forced into discovering Blue Oceans, so perhaps it’s worth a read.
There are great case studies of brands such as Cirque du Soleil and Yellow Tail that reimagine new revenue streams and industries.
Here are a few resources that you might find interesting to study.
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/business-advice/strategy/the-case-for-change-atcasella-
putting-a-strategic-bounce-into-yellow-tail-wines/
BRAINSTORM
A great brainstorming exercise to help you discover Blue Oceans could be to lock your senior management team away for a Thinkday to answer the following question:
• Which parts of your business aren’t fun, aren’t productive, and drive your staff to hate their jobs? (For example chasing unpaid invoices)
• Which parts of your industry are not valued by customers, and can they be minimised or eliminated?
• What do customers really want that the industry doesn’t currently provide?
• What can you do better than anyone else?
This exercise may help you remodel into a leaner, more profitable operation.
When brainstorming, break the task into three sections.
- Label the idea, not the “how?”
- Label the positives of the idea
- Label the potential negatives of the idea
- Label the “how?”
If done correctly, you’ll spend a significant amount of time on each idea, reaching strategic depths that you won’t have the opportunity to discuss in day-to-day operations.
To hold a brainstorming session effectively, it’s best to be taken out of your usual working environment, turn your phones off, laptops away and concentrate your complete focus around a flip chart.
Spend the money and buy those big colourful markers to write down every idea, regardless of whether it’s good, bad or ugly.
Once a page is full, stick the flip chart page to the wall for everyone to see and refer to over the coming days/sessions.
Take regular breaks, eat well and leave the beers until after 5pm!
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CHAPTER 4.
SYSTEMS
If the Coronavirus escalates and people are asked to stay home for public safety reasons,
your business will need to be ready for remote employee access to keep your operations
flowing.
After the 2011 Christchurch Earthquakes (New Zealand), CBD based businesses lost access
to their premises and had to communicate via private Facebook groups. First and foremost,
the businesses were looking out for the safety of their colleagues, but it then developed
into a communication forum for progressing the cleanup, the updates and reestablishing
operations.
With today’s software platforms available, you have many communication forums that you
can easily set up in advance. These options could be Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google
Hangouts.
It’s good to keep internal conversations away from emails in moments of elevated emotions,
but it’s also a good business practice to have these systems in place to reduce the feeling of
email-overwhelm.
With today’s technology, most businesses access emails through a browser and host their
documents on the cloud. This fail-safe luxury wasn’t practical in 2011 for many businesses,
meaning that when their internal servers became inaccessible, the businesses ceased to
operate.
If you haven’t transitioned to cloud-based storage, then perhaps the time is now.
Even if you have your emails and documents cloud-based, you may still lose your operational
workflow if it’s not an online software platform. If you’re operating your business with paper
job sheets, then you might want to investigate Trello, which is free to join, and an online
platform that allows you to create different stages/states to progress a job through.
You can invite users who can all see the status of jobs/tasks and they can comment, ping you
a notification, add photos and make checklists.
It’s powerful and simple.
The next and possibly the most critical challenge is distribution.
Getting supplies is going to require creativity in this scenario because assuming the items
you’re wanting are in stock, you may not have too many people that are brave enough to
operate a courier service.
What are the bare essentials that you need for your business to operate with if couriers stop
running for a month?
Make a list, and stock up with several months supply while you have the opportunity. After
all, we’re facing a toilet paper crisis as we speak. Ensure every employee has an emergency
stock at home in case cities are forced to quarantine.
Is transport likely to stop? At this stage, transport is experiencing shipping delays, which
creates operational and logistical challenges, but companies are still receiving goods from
various parts of China. The challenge is that orders are delayed, and instead of receiving
daily shipments, they’re receiving multiple shipments on a single day. It’s not ideal, but it’s
manageable.
Other good news for consumers and businesses outside of the oil industry is that there is
an oversupply of fuel, ensuring low prices at the pump. China’s demands have dropped a
sharp 20% over the past few weeks and considering the travel restrictions and the aviation
businesses are scaling back flights, we’ll see diesel and jet fuels at a temporarily reduced
price.
If transport does in fact stop, then it could be due to a travel-lockdown. It would be likely to
be temporary, but that means that packages won’t be delivered. You won’t be able to release
your products, you may have stock expire, and your operations may come to a grinding halt
because your essential cost of goods sold are diminished.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it might be a clever idea to stock up now.
If you’re a printing company, then pre-purchase inks & papers to ensure you can continue
production. You may not be able to deliver the finished goods, but imagine how many
marketing professionals will be using their time wisely to prepare for their fast-start
marketing launch, once the economy kicks back into life. Imagine the opportunity if you
were the only company operating during these times and the market share you might gain.
Again, this may seem like over-the-top speculation, but as a worst-case scenario, you’ll use
the goods over the coming months.
If ground transport stops, then waste management is also going to be a significant issue,
both domestically and commercially. Stockpiling rubbish bags and thinking about where
you’ll store them, keeping them away from animals and unfavourable conditions will ensure
continued hygiene and a pleasant working environment. Rubbish mounts quickly if your
waste management isn’t controlled; it only takes a week of production before your business
overflows with chaos.
Transport is used as a good indicator of how an economy is performing. If there are a
lot of trucks on the road, the economy is thriving with activity. If you hear of half-empty
loads, and lay-offs are occurring, you know the economy is slowing. In this scenario,
road transport may remain consistent, supplying local demands, at least in the short
term. However, sea transport is experiencing shipping delays, and the aviation industry is
discounting furiously to minimise significant deficits.
If you operate the paper distributor that supplies the printing company, and you’re
anticipating that your employees will eventually be forced to remain at home, then consider
distributing paper to your clients on consignment, assuming they have the space to store it.
This simple change of tact might see revenues continue through a period which may
otherwise be very slow. The owners of the printing companies will probably work
through this period, capturing as much revenue as possible to try and compensate for their
overheads.
In the back of your mind as you’re reading this you’re thinking that all of these suggestions
have merit, but will they be enough? One thing to consider is that if an economic shutdown
does temporarily occur, there’s a high chance that the Banks aren’t likely to allow
entire nations to go broke.
Just recently, when the bushfires of Australia occurred, the banks offered the affected
home-owners a gesture of mortgage relief. They paused mortgages while the homeowners
got their insurance and finances under control because the long-term financial loss for the
banks wouldn’t make sense.
Therefore, if you’re worried about the lease that you’ve just signed, or you’ve just purchased
a building with significant overhead, you might find peace in the thought that if the Corona-
Economy rapidly escalates, it’s likely there will be financial relief.
Here are a few resources that you might find interesting to study.
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CHAPTER 6.
REMOTE EMPLOYEES
Businesses are already adapting for the welfare of their staff by restricting travel, restricting
large meetings and enforcing Skype discussions where possible.
Video conference calls may become the norm for many businesses over the coming months,
and perhaps this is a moment in time where video conference becomes more socially
acceptable as a way of reducing travel time and creating workplace efficiencies. Of course,
there will be a loss of intuition by not being in the same room as your counterpart, but the
pace of business has been accelerating for some time now.
Video conferencing also has the added advantage of being able to record the meetings,
including a visual of the shared screens. A tip for new players is that if you want to train a
new remote employee on how to use your software or navigate your systems, you can host
a meeting in Zoom with yourself, record the screen share and demonstrate by doing. You’ll
click save, and the video training will automatically download to your computer.
The idea of remote employees working from home might increase in popularity. In fact,
clever business owners might install new performance-based incentives to increase
productivity, specifically for remote workers, and find that their business functions more
profitably without the traditional overheads.
The challenge here is to keep a positive team environment, a united culture and to
ensure that remote employees are engaged. Emotionally intelligent leaders recognise the
importance of team bonding regardless of where people are located.
Great companies that run offshore teams involve their offshore staff in Christmas parties,
morning meetings, and they purposely install fun into their offshore team’s workday.
Perhaps local businesses will have to consider a similar leadership style to adapt to a new
remote-style environment.
Some of the control methods to ensure your remote employees aren’t taking advantage are
to use screen capturing software that monitors the user’s activity. It’s designed to randomly
take a quick snap of what your remote-employee is working on progressively throughout
the day. You’ll see if they are productive or not at a glance with the time-stamping feature.
Remote employees don’t always love this software, but it’s a common practice that many
companies use to off-shore labour effectively. Local employees might see it as a breach of
privacy if they are using their own personal computers, so be wary about introducing these
tools. If you’ve installed the right incentive system, you may not need these tools to police
productivity.
A good example of screen capturing software for remote employees is
https://screenshotmonitor.com/
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CHAPTER 7.
PLANNING
A framework for planning the next quarter could be an essential part of your business
journey. We are facing uncertain times, and by reading this short e-book, you’re obviously
committed to protecting your business and open to capturing new opportunities.
It’s quite possible that you’ll see many of your competitors take too long to react and be
caught without a plan. They’ll be trapped in what’s called “limbo”, and there’s nothing
worse.
“Limbo” is a state of uncertainty, a state of stress, and not being able to function clearly
with any purpose or direction.
Anyone who has experienced a natural disaster will have had first-hand experience in
feeling the uneasy vulnerability of what’s next.
This book has been written with one intent; That intent is to help you prepare, to have a
direction and to have a plan. The best plans are usually written on a single page because
anything more, tends to get buried in a draw for safekeeping.
A one-page plan can be pinned to the wall. It can be your guide to making the right
decisions over the coming few quarters.
Below is an example of how you might choose to write your one-page plan using the traffic
light system. Highlight each box in either the colour green, indicating that you’ve achieved
each goal, in yellow if you’re partially underway, or red if you’ve failed dismally.
Lastly, real leaders tackle challenges and view them as opportunities. It’s now your time to
prove your worth and protect those around you, both financially and emotionally.
If you took value from this article, please like & share this post to help other business owners. Over & Out,
Thinkroom.
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