Webinar Recap: How to market and do business online
Tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs on how to expand their online presence during the current pandemic and beyond.
For our April 23rd webinar (part of our free community education series for entrepreneurs), we were joined by Sophia Fang, Head of Marketing at Honeycomb Credit, to discuss best practices and strategies for expanding your online presence. This topic was especially timely as most small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs have been forced to engage exclusively online with customers and stakeholders during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
View the presentation slides and scroll down to watch a recording of the webinar.
Here are the top 6 highlights
1. Consistency is key
- Your brand shouldn’t look like a bag of trail mix. Work to develop a brand style guide that you can faithfully use across all engagement platforms, both in print and online.
- Six essential components of a successful style guide are: brand story, voice, logo, color palette, typography, and imagery.
- Templatize posts or messages that you regularly communicate. This saves YOU time and helps convey a consistent message to your audience.
2. Relevant, Timely, Contextual
- If you’re just starting your business, focus on product- or service-centric content.
- As you grow, try to figure out the behaviors of your target audience and create content that appeals to them. Using quizzes — or surveys disguised as quizzes — is a great way to learn more about your clientele.
- Quickly write and publish when you have an urgent message to get out.
3. Don’t be timid
- If you want someone’s attention, whether it be a customer, a journalist, or anyone in between, you need to do everything you can to make sure that your message gets to them.
- On social media, Sophia recommends “tagging everyone and their grandma!”
- Ask customers for testimonials. They are versatile and help build trust among existing and potential new customers.
4. Upcycling is the responsible thing to do
- Every piece of marketing content that you create can be creatively reused and posted on other channels.
- Tweak your message — expand, edit, or redesign — to fit the appropriate audience and platform. Always remember who you are talking to and how.
- Transform a quick tweet into a blog post, a video, a newsletter section, or a boosted ad.
5. Marketing during COVID-19
- COVID-19 fatigue is real. Unless your product or service addresses something specific to the pandemic, try to use other messages to reach customers.
- Ad spending is down, so prices to run ads are also lower. If you have the budget, now may be an excellent time to boost your online ad spending.
- Be proactive and prepare to shift your messaging from ‘relief’ to ‘recovery.’
6. Free tools are your friends
Here is a list of some tools Sophia uses every day:
- Canva [video tutorial] for creating social media templates
- Facebook Creator Studio for scheduling FB/IG posts
- Later link.in.bio for adding multiple links to your IG bio
- Otter.ai for audio transcriptions
- Airtable for creating content calendars Random but useful
- Ezgif.com for making gifs
- Full Page Screen Capture for screenshotting webpages
- Image Downloader for downloading images from any webpage
- Quicktime for screen-recording your (apple) laptop screen or phone (USB cable)
- Unsplash for finding freely usable images
Learn more about Honeycomb Credit’s Loan Relief Program for Small Businesses impacted by COVID-19.
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