COVID-19 Small Business Survival Guide: Increasing Virtual Visits
Posted: April 27, 2020 - By Cris RiveraSmall business owners as a whole have had to face the challenge that comes with a worldwide pandemic. Over the last few months, your business and businesses around the world have changed their approach in how they offer services to customers. Whether you own a salon, a spa, or a medical practice, one of the more prominent changes across numerous industries is virtual visits as it helps increase revenue, boost office efficiency and gain new customers.
If this is the first time your business is offering online virtual services, you’ll want to make sure it’s communicated to your customers. Sending email newsletters, one-off text messages, and updating your social media pages are great ways to update your customers, but if you would like to continue to increase your virtual visits here are some additional ways that you can do just that.
1. Update Social Media
As the entire country is on stay-at-home orders individuals are spending more time on their phone and on social media everyday. Keeping your social media pages and your website up-to-date remains crucial to your business, but there are some additional strategies you can employ on social media to help increase your virtual visits. On Facebook, for example, you can join community groups in the city where your practice is located. You can post your hours of operation, special promotions, and of course virtual visit notifications!
Demandforce Insider Tip: Be sure that you’re not spamming the community group by posting multiple times a day, and check with group admins for guidelines and rules for posting.
On Instagram, use stories to help spread the word about virtual visits. On Twitter, you could do a contest giveaway for a free consultation and have people enter by following your social pages and liking your posts. This also serves as a great way to enhance your online presence!
2. Reach out to community leaders
Community leaders like your mayor or district representatives are fantastic resources that you can contact to help get the word out about your business offering virtual services. Small businesses are the cornerstone of any community and city leaders certainly recognize this fact. It’s important to keep in touch with community leaders to help come up with new ways to promote small businesses in the area so that they can continue operating.
Cities all over the U.S. have collaborated with local small businesses to share updates on their social media page as well as provide updates about local businesses on their city website. Expand your reach with the help of your local officials and their resources.
3. Contact local news media outlets
From both the national and local media perspective, it’s clear how this pandemic is affecting small businesses of all types across the nation. News outlets continue to highlight the struggles and ways that small businesses are adapting amidst this pandemic.
If you find yourself needing to increase your virtual visits, be sure to reach out to your local community paper or your local TV station. Tell them how you and your business are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, the precautions you’re taking to ensure the safety of your employees and customers, and what services you are still offering to the community.
Don’t forget, these challenging times require that small business owners might try things that might seem ‘outside the box’ but rest assured if your business is struggling you’ll want to try the methods mentioned above as they could potentially benefit your business in the short term!
