The news last night about the country going in to lockdown for the next four weeks increases the uncertainty for business owners. The smaller the business the more severe the implications become. Many smaller businesses struggle to pay the bills even in ‘normal times’ and putting everything on hold for weeks or months on end isn’t a scenario many of us ever countenanced prior to March.

The uncertainty about how long this new lockdown is going to continue also increases stress both financial and emotional.

So, the question is, how can you protect your business, build resiliency and minimise the impact of this and future lockdowns or restrictions?

Here are my 3 tips to help business owners protect their businesses and livelihoods

The UK is the world's third-largest e-commerce market, with nearly £200 billion in sales in 2019! Currently e-commerce sales make up 27.5% of retail sales in the UK. Research predicts that these figures are only going to increase.

Many people are embracing ecommerce for the first time or increasing their usage and using online stores for new areas and items. Many of the older generation have had to embrace ecommerce whilst they have been shielding. This opens a whole new market that is waiting to be serviced.

The benefits of ecommerce are many and include:

1. The ability to trade 24/7/365

2. The ability to trade globally.

3. Having in depth insights to your customers behaviour and demographics

4. Being able to proactively remarket to and retarget customers 

5. Low expansion cost 

The cost of building Apps has reduced significantly in recent years.  This has resulted in an explosion of Apps being built for small and medium sized businesses. There are over 4 million apps available today with over £100bn per year of revenue being generated by them. With an estimated 55.5 million smart phone users in the UK and 90% of time spent on mobile phones is on Apps means that there is a huge market waiting for you.  

These are all eyewatering statistics but what do they mean for you? Why should you invest time and money in having your own App built? The answer is simple; ‘a mobile app will increase customer loyalty and encourage your customers to spend more frequently with you’. It can do this in multiple ways such as:

1. Making it extremely easy to buy your products or services. With just a few swipes of their finger a customer can find, and pay for your products or services whether that is beauty products, food, alcohol or pretty much anything else

2. Loyalty Scheme, it is well know that loyalty schemes bring customers back time and time again. Many companies have a loyalty or rewards scheme. Ask yourself two questions; how many loyalty cards do you have and how many times have you forgotten to use them? What if they were all on your phone, how easy and convenient would that be?

3. Communicating with your customers. All companies want to keep in contact with their customers but most types of communication require the recipient to do something. Open an envelope, open an email, search for your website etc. The beauty of An App is that you can use Push notifications to make your message appear on the home screen of their phone.

Social media is becoming increasingly important. Social media usage rocketed throughout the first lockdown and there is no reason not to expect it to increase again during this lockdown. 

A lot of business owners have traditionally managed their social media channels themselves. This often leads to sporadic posting and disjointed messages. Having a defined social media strategy is important because your reputation can be enhanced or destroyed by social media.

I could write several blogs on social media strategy but that is beyond the scope of this blog,.  Here are some key elements you need to consider with a social media strategy:

1. What platforms do you need to be on? The answer to this is simple, it is the same ones your customers and potential customers are on.

2. How often should you post. Well you should post once at least once per day across the platforms you are on. It can be a challenge to create original and engaging content all of the time, but you can share third party content such as industry news or events

3. Followers and following. You should follow as many of your customers as possible and like and comment on their posts. Additionally, follow your competitors as well, see what type of messaging they are pushing out and keep abreast of any offers they are promoting

There are many other considerations and opportunities with social media but the overriding goal is to ensure that you are always at the front and centre of your customers and potential customers minds.

None of us wanted to enter another lockdown and it will put a lot of small businesses under significant pressure but what we have learned from the previous lockdown is that we essentially have two options. 

You can either hunker down and wait for it to end and hope you can pick up where you left off. Or you can take this opportunity to take stock, continue marketing and build resilience and additional income streams into your business.