What you can be doing with your digital marketing now to improve your footprint so you can hit the ground running when New Zealand alert level restrictions are lowered
With travel restrictions and a national lock down in place, things have really slowed down economically for everyone and every business; aside from those in essential services. Now is the perfect time to be thinking about how to move forward, adapt your business offering to the local or domestic market (for the immediate future), and be ready to run in the ‘aftermath’ of this pandemic.
As a business owner, once this is over, you will have a lot to do and think about – you will be back working ‘in’ your business. So take this time now to prepare, be ready, get on the starting block and set yourself up to keep ahead of your competitors when the restrictions are lifted.
In what can be a time of a lot of inward thinking, as you work to keep your business alive, it is essential to stay top of mind with your audience, even if they are not dining in your restaurant, enjoying your attraction or staying in your accommodation this month. With almost everyone staying at home over the coming weeks, scrolling their favourite social media more than ever before (being one of the only ways to ‘social interact’ for now), you have a real opportunity to reach your existing and potential buyers in the comfort of their own surrounds. And you need to jump on it!
As always, be active on social media: share content, talk to your audience, reply to their comments or private messages, and reassure them that you are still there; even if it is virtually. In two words: stay connected! Don’t cut the tie with your audience now.
It is also important to be smart with your communication (on any medium) right now: be mindful of being too pushy with sales during this time as many people are feeling the impact in their finances right now. You can still share what you are offering, entice people with your product, talk about developments within your business or even share a bit of behind the scenes of the home office. Now it the time to really show the human side of your brand; be positive, be sensitive and…be kind!
To help you, we, at Collective Concepts, have put together a list of 5 things you should plan to do over the next four weeks to improve your digital marketing results (especially on social media) and be ready to welcome your guests, customers and clients back when business returns to its new normal.
1. Review past results with analytics
To help you prioritise actions to start now and over the next few weeks, the first thing to do is look at any analytics tools you have access to, for instance:
- Your website might (or should!) be connected to Google Analytics. If you’re new to this, you really only need to review a few key KPIs to be able to analyse your audience and results: number of visitors to your site, most visited pages, conversions (if possible), demographics, sources and queries. This last one is interesting; it will show you what people are looking for, this translates to what they want to find when they visit your website
- Facebook Insights. It’s worth reviewing:
- Your engagement rate
- Which types of post are working best i.e. have the most engagement and/or reach
- Times when your fans are connected: before lockdown, people were mostly using Facebook in the evening. Did it change this past week? Probably!
- The demographics of your followers so you know who to target your content too
- Instagram Analytics. Review:
- The days and times your followers are most connected
- Use free tools to calculate your engagement rate (send us a message if you want to know what tool we use)
- Check the analytics of your past posts and stories to analyse which ones recieved the most reach, likes, comments, re-shares or saves…remember this is the gold that helps you to keep serving your audience with the content they find valuable.
Make sure you have a ‘before COVID-19’, and a ‘during COVID-19’ period set up, as while both times are important, they are not comparable!
2. Prepare a digital marketing strategy
Now that you have collected analytics and reviewed them, you can begin to prepare a digital marketing strategy. This is a plan of ‘what to do and how to do’ it for your digital (or even just social) communication during and after the lockdown.
Here are a few things to consider and include:
- What are your business goals: for the remainder of 2020 and beyond, and more importantly, what are your actions required to achieve these goals?
- Who do you want to reach: your actual or existing customers (who are they and where are they) and potential or future customers? These groups make up your audience but you should plan to target them independently within your overall strategy. It pays to note that your ‘existing’ customers may look different in the near future too, especially if boarder restrictions stay in place for some time. Now is the perfect time to look to reach a local or domestic audience and develop products or content for an audience who are likely to spend in the more immediate future.
- Which medium (social channels, newsletter, web blogs) should you use to reach them: keeping in mind, you won’t find the same kind of audience on every medium
- The angle, content or editorial line, and the brand ‘tone of voice’ you want to give to your communication: this is the message or messages you want to deliver to your audience. Remember to think of your brand as a person; what is their personality, how do they speak and who are they speaking too?
- Frequency and times to post your new content: quality over quality will always win the analytics war!
- How to optimise your existing mediums (social media, website, blog, newsletters…)
- Where to spend the budget, if any.
3. Plan out your content
Organise the content ideas from the strategy into a calendar to help give you clarity of what, when and where you will post your content. You can organise yourself in the way you are the most comfortable putting your ideas together and arranging them. Some like to print a calendar and write content ideas in each box, others will use an Excel spreadsheet, and there is also dedicated apps to help you, like Hootsuite, Buffer, Later or Facebook Creator Studio.
We generally plan out content, topics or themes a few months ahead (while leaving room for all the good ad hoc goings on) but right now, in these very changeable times, aim to have at least 2 weeks of content ready to go, so you can focus on other areas of your business during this time too.
4. Create the content for your social media channels
Creating quality content, that your audience wants to consume, takes time (trust us!) and is often not given priority in businesses who don’t have in-house or external marketing support. Now is the perfect time to:
- Go through your camera roll to find edit worthy imagery or video content
- Curate a folder of free images (our favourite sites for free stock photos are Unsplash and Pixabay). Be careful when choosing free images, that they still fit your brand, sit nicely alongside your own images, and haven’t been used by competitors or many times over in the market
- Create tiles or imagery for social media. We encourage our clients to use Canva, think of it as the design tool for non-designers! Content should be created for each social channel if possible, as all channels have different sizing requirements. Here is a cheat sheet if you need one.
- Create videos and/or animations (we love Biteable). This will really get your creativity flowing!
- Write blogs for your website – remember, you are the expert in what your offer or deliver so make sure your customers know it. (This will also help with your SEO)
- Prepare and send newsletters to keep your existing audience up to date with developments in your business. Remember to tie in your brand look between social media tiles and your newsletter for a cohesive feel.
- Start an IGTV channel, the long form video app on Instagram, and post regular videos or create a series if you want to keep a theme going. You can see one we have created here for our wedding and event clients….have no fear tourism and hospitality digital clients, your series is up next!
Ask your team if they have content ideas too. Organise a zoom call to brainstorm or get them to create some content and send it to you for posting.
Remember, in your content: be positive, caring, kind. Your audience will remember the personal or human element of your content most of all. This is what helps to create a sense of trust and encourages people to buy from you when they are ready.
A special note for those B2B businesses, now is the time to optimise your LinkedIn profile too. Build your network, post regular content, and share your experience and your knowledge with others, all while discovering potential or future clients in the process.
5. Implement or post your new content
You’ve done the hard work so now it is time to share it. There are several apps out there made to help you schedule content: some are free, some are not. Here, at Collective Concepts, we like to use tools like Buffer or Later but sometimes we simply schedule our Facebook posts directly via the inbuilt publishing tool.
Send your newsletters and post your blogs…and include these as posts in your social content calendar too, if appropriate.
This lockdown is a first for everyone and your audience will no doubt begin to develop different habits: test different combinations (such as times, type of content or tone), analyse your results (see tip #1) and test again.
We hope this gives you a starting point to create a forward thinking, user friendly digital marketing strategy. If you’re like us, working on tangible ways to get through this unprecedented time, while connecting with people, developing innovative product offerings and planning a way forward, is the perfect antidote to keeping positive and focused for the coming months and beyond. To our beloved tourism and hospitality industry…we are in this together, and we will come back stronger than before.
If you need help, advice or support with your digital marketing, please get in touch. We are currently offering:
- Download of our FREE Quick Fire Social Media Audit and identify what is working and what areas need improvement based on a ‘snap shot in time’ of all your social media channels
- An initial complementary consultation via Zoom to discuss your immediate needs**
- Further consultations or personalised training via Zoom**
- A range of services at ‘industry rates’ for tourism and hospitality businesses for the remainder of 2020. (Specific terms and conditions apply to this offer, please contact us for details and pricing)
- Consultation and training through the Regional Business Partnership Voucher Funding Schemes*
*Small businesses may qualify for vouchers to help pay for services such as training workshops, courses and coaching that build the management capabilities of their owners, operators and key managers. Management Capability Development Vouchers are only available through the Regional Business Partner Network (RBP) Growth Advisors.
Vouchers may be provided to a business where the Growth Advisors have identified a need for management training as part of an action plan to support the business owner to grow and innovate their business.
For more information on the Management Capability Development Voucher Fund or to find your local Growth Advisor go to www.regionalbusinesspartners.co.nz
**Consultations and training will return to face to face where required for local clients when COVID-19 restrictions allow.
