Is your business part of new habits formed during COVID-19?

During the lockdown, we've been forced to break old habits and develop new ones. Are you making your business part of the new ones?

According to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit. On average it takes 66 days. By the time we start relaxing the current physical distancing, it’ll be around that 60-day mark. We've had to break with old habits and form new ones. Some of them will be bad habits while others will be good or better habits than before, such as hand washing.

Some businesses have chosen to shut down while many are trying to make a go of it. Especially hard hit is any business that relies on in-person customers. For the ones that have stayed open, how have you modified what you offer or what you do to survive? 

I was watching an industry webinar the other day, I won’t tell you which one, and the marketing person on the panel said they shouldn’t be doing anything with their websites. That’s an old habit way of thinking. These industries’ websites have never been very useful. Some of the businesses in this industry never change them once put up. There are many third-party services that helped them get the word out but have failed them during this first wave of the pandemic.

Businesses, especially smaller businesses, have to take ownership of their presence online.

How? 

1. Decide on what the top task is that you want your customers to do. For example, if you own a restaurant you want people to place on order, a yoga studio, take streaming classes, or a tax preparer, schedule a call. 
2. Update your current state of the business on your website, Google My Business, social media, and third party services. Add the top task call-to-action if you have one. 
3. Send out an update to your email list. Don’t have one? Start building it. 
4. If you sell products but don’t have e-commerce on your site. Add it. Some of you may have to get permission from the manufacturer to sell online. It might be easier now to get permission. 
5. If you have a service that relies on people physically being in your space then figure out an offering that you could digitize and sell online. 
6. Repeat number 2 and 3. 

Then what?

1. Build a process to market your business. In the beginning, it’ll take some time but you can probably get it down to 15-minutes a day once you’re in the routine. 
2. Most platforms are giving discounts for pay per click ads and boosting posts. Posts can be a picture or a relevant sharing of someone else’s post or a video or an article.
3. Document your process. 
4. Delegate it when you have the budget. 

What to keep an eye on

1. The consistency of your brand across physical and digital platforms.
2. Consistency of sharing. 
3. Consistency of updating your list. 
4. The analytics. How has your effectiveness been on the numbers?

I’m going to be doing a series of videos that will help with this list. I’ll update this post with a link when I start posting. You can also sign up below to get notified when I post something new. Let me know what challenges you have been facing these last few weeks.