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Four Digital Marketing Areas To Focus On During Crisis Recovery

Forbes Communications Council

Jessica is a digital expert & founder of Valux, LLC, a digital marketing company that helps businesses complete the digital transformation.

Many business owners and marketers are finding themselves in a similar situation today. The pandemic has caused many challenges, put previous marketing ideas on hold and even changed the ways we operate. As we look to get our businesses back in gear, your target market needs to know you’re still there.

Marketing is vital for getting the word out about your business and what you have to offer. It wasn’t an option prior to Covid-19, and it certainly isn’t now. With consumers taking to the internet to find what they need, the right digital marketing campaign can help you to reach your audience and draw people in. Most importantly, you can keep your customers informed about your latest status.

Here are four areas to focus on in your business restoration strategy:

1. Boost your SEO with quality backlinks.

During the reopening stage, getting your website near the top of the search results page becomes even more essential. There are several ways to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and make yourself more visible, including incorporating backlinks. Backlinks are inbound hyperlinks from separate websites that direct back to your own site. They’re a crucial component of search engine optimization.

Just optimizing any old links won’t do. Links that bring visitors to your site need to be credible and trustworthy. Questionable links can actually hurt your rankings, so quality is key. 

Of course, the first step should be fixing broken links on your website. Not only it will improve your SEO, but it will also optimize your user experience.

Then, there are many ways to get additional backlinks to your website. Sites that have provided links to others may be willing to provide one to you as well if you can provide them with something useful in return. You may also offer a free post to another website in exchange for a backlink. For example, a blogger or another company gets free content to feature on their site, and you get a quality link to your site.

Public relations is another way to gain links, either from press sites or by getting mentioned in news articles. Offer yourself as a source for a daily newsletter, or create a press release to distribute.

Getting links to your site is an important part of boosting your SEO and making your site more visible. With quality links, your website will rank higher, and you’re more likely to start getting more visitors.

2. Keep up to date on your local marketing and reviews management. 

Many customers are looking for businesses near their current location. In addition to being optimized for search engines, you should be optimized for local searches. This will help more people searching locally to be able to find you when they need what you have to offer.

Prioritize your Google listing because it’s often the first thing online users will see about your business. I recently published a simple guide to optimizing your Google listing that you can refer to. The key right now is to keep the information in your listing up to date, particularly as your operating hours or services available change with the stages of reopening your business. 

Your online presence is more important than ever during the reopening stage, so don’t let your competition swipe your customers. Manage your online reputation by monitoring local reviews closely to stay ahead of your competitors. This is also a good way to interact with your customers for business recovery.

3. Address your business’s restart in your content marketing. 

The key to content marketing is creating high-quality content that’s relevant to your visitors (and your business) and that offers something useful. Incorporate keywords as well to help make your content more visible. Brand yourself as an expert source of information; this will help to attract “self-qualified” customers who are looking for services or products you offer.

During the reopening phase, consider a 15- to 30-second “restart” video to help keep your customers informed and feeling confident with your business and procedures. Don’t forget to leverage user-generated content (UGC) to engage consumers. It’s one of the most effective ways to generate more content with minimum resources.

4. Keep your email marketing relevant. 

Email marketing is affordable and effective, and personalized emails can be particularly beneficial. Especially during this time, your business can stay connected with your loyal customers and continue to reach prospective clients. 

Sending out emails to your customers is a good way to announce your reopening and inform them of your operating hours, days, limitations and more. Keep in mind, though, that your customers receive countless emails throughout the day, so you need to create attention-grabbing emails that stand out among other “we are open” messages. 

To stand out, consider your target audience and what they’re looking for from you. You can segment these audiences to further personalize your messages. Encourage safe shopping behaviors, and tell your customers what policies or new procedures you implemented during this time. This shows that you’re putting your customers’ concerns first before any promotional message.

Owning a business is great, but recovering from a crisis is a battle every business owner is fighting. Digital marketing is essential for getting the word out about your business and bringing people to your site. Implement successful strategies that will aid your reopening and get you started back on the road to competitive, revenue-generating activities.


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