While in Lockdown Know the Key Things Businesses Need to Focus On

1. While in Lockdown : Know the Key Things Businesses Need to Focus On I am writing this in phase three of the national lockdown in India. And we have still about ten to twelve days before actually, the lockdown comes out. We see several regions slowly coming out of a lockdown gradually. But, you know, as of now, it’s a gradual process. And even as we actually gradually come out of the lockdown, the organizations are going to have some major challenges in front of them. Broadly, I feel any small organization or any SME has to focus on four major pillars, 1.Sales and marketing 2.Finance 3.Operations 4.The People or the HR Practices Having personally been in the sales and marketing space for almost around 23-24 years, I would personally feel that Sales and marketing together is one of the most important elements, because only if you are able to actually get business for your company, then you can worry about how you can feed your operations or how you can feed your people, or how you can analyze finances, cash flow and so on and so forth. I feel it is very important for any organization to focus on growth as a key objective, especially with the situations that we actually see all around us. The next few months is actually going to be difficult from an organization standpoint actually to manage the growth objectives. So let’s look at what an organization typically can do to achieve its growth objectives. Typically, you would have salespeople that are on your roles, and these salespeople will actually do a lot of prospecting, meet with new clients, and will drive new business for you. In the new circumstances. You know, there would be severe travel restrictions with social distancing and all of these parameters. This is going to affect your meetings and travel, especially if you are talking across regions. So that’s going to be a challenge. The second aspect is actually all of the trade shows, events. These are popular grounds for people to really starting engaging with newer businesses, newer

2. people, and start prospecting for business over the next few months. You know, we can easily foresee that trade shows and exhibitions will actually face a challenge. This is true not just for India but could be across the world. We’ve already seen since almost about February. Most of these trade shows, most of these expos have actually been canceled. In fact, so much so that today, All the major events like the Olympics are also facing a lot of challenges. So, you know, whether we’ll be able to have the Olympics this year, next year, or whether it had to be completely scrapped. I am sure this is going to be talked about for some time to come. So with that as a given, what options do businesses have to keep generating and meeting their growth objectives? Digital means and digital marketing are some of the options that are actually available for businesses. Even at this time, the good news is actually all of your target market is still available to you on your digital Channels. They actually have Lesser disturbance and lesser meetings and they’re not traveling anymore, which means they have so much more time to engage on your Digital channels, understand a lot more about you, and then decide if they want to do business with you or not? I want to talk about four major areas that you need to focus on or the next few months, which will actually help you create a significant and compelling digital presence for your business. 1. Website & SEO One is basically all of the websites and search engine optimization. When I say this, it is basically you have to rank higher on relevant keywords on the Google search algorithms. This ensures that anybody who’s commercially searching for any product or services related to you can find you much faster. And if they can find you much faster and you have. Good practices enabled on your website, including good usability, good capture mechanisms. Then there’s a very good chance that all of the traffic that you get at your website, you will be able to convert it to business needs. 2. Social Media The second initiative, which is actually very important, is all of the social media, so whether you’re in a B2B business or a B2C business. You can focus on the major popular channels, which include Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. You have to continuously maintain your presence in each of these forums, and this will actually help you generate a significant presence, as well as you will be able to start influencing potential leads in this segment. 3. Social Paid Ads The third channel, which is actually very important, is all of the social paid ads. And when I say social paid ads, it is all the options that you have. To advertise on channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google. And this all of these channels and all of these all of these provide you multiple options to target ads, Specific sets of individuals. So you should definitely leverage the options that actually work best for you. 4. Email marketing & Email newsletters The fourth most important thing is email marketing and e-mail newsletters. It is important for you to keep creating a presence and keep reaching your potential target audience. Frequently, they may or

3. may not interact with your emails initially, but over a period of time, if you’re actually making sense, you will find a lot more convergence happening from e-mail marketing. Of course, when you’re doing email marketing, you’ll have to take care of several aspects, like making sure that you have a good delivery rate, you don’t land up in spam. Your messaging, your subject lines all have to be really valuable for your prospective clients. I think these four major channels will actually help to build a significant digital presence and help you keep your growth engines working well. I wish you the best of luck. In case you need any assistance as an agency, that’s one of the things that we’ve been actually working with a lot of companies for. We will be happy to support you as well.