After your state and city have lifted their lockdown restrictions, it can be exciting to welcome customers back. Once you’ve developed a safety plan to ensure your community stays healthy, it’s time to get customers back physically through your doors!
But with reduced foot traffic and customers who prefer to stay at home, how can you make sure your business is discovered?
Now more than ever, it’s important to meet customers where they are. That means coming up with unique promotions, online and off.
In this short guide, we’ll go over some of the best strategies for attracting new customers as you reopen your business.
Modify Your Website
Your website is your business’s digital storefront—the first place most customers will go to double-check your hours, review your offerings, and find your contact information.
Have you made changes to your website to keep customers updated over the course of the pandemic?
Marketing consultant Joanne Klee reveals that Google search trends have changed significantly. More and more customers are searching for takeout food, curbside pickup retail products, and virtual services. If you haven’t updated your site to reflect the new needs of your potential customers, you may not be able to convert these customers.
To make sure you’re tapping into the market and keeping future and existing customers informed, make the following changes:
- Create a new page specifically highlighting your take-out or curbside pickup options so that it’s easy for customers to find the most relevant information.
- Modify the metadata of existing pages to make sure your website appears in local search results. Your web builder should make it easy to preview the description that will appear in search engines. Make sure this description includes “takeout” and “pickup,” as is relevant for your target audience.
- If desired, create a COVID-19 alert describing the changes you’ve made to ensure customer safety.
Connect on Nextdoor
Beyond your website, it’s also important to connect with your local community on their go-to sites for neighborhood information. Nextdoor is where neighborhoods connect online, and 88% of Nextdoor members shop at local businesses once a week or more.
It’s free to create a Business Page on Nextdoor and start connecting with your local community. With their tools for local businesses, you can:
- Customize your page – Add photos, tell your unique story, and help customers get to know your products and services online.
- Engage with Business Posts – It’s free to post, which can connect you with customers and other small business owners alike. Get the word out locally about your business and keep locals up to date about changes to your business, like new hours or new contactless means of ordering or transacting.
- Run promotions – Treat your neighbors to an exclusive sale with promotions through Nextdoor’s Local Deals. A re-opening Local Deal could be a way to garner attention among customers that live nearby.
You’ll start showing up in neighborhood search results as soon as you have one recommendation. From there, the more you engage, the deeper your community roots will grow.
Sell Subscriptions and Create Memberships
One of the major difficulties of running a small business is planning for changes in volume and profit from month-to-month.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many small businesses have discovered a way to make cash flow more predictable—offering subscriptions and memberships.
In past years, memberships were just for gyms. Subscriptions were for magazines. At most, coffee shops and hair salons offered punch cards to reward customer loyalty. But if you think about it, some big-box retailers already benefit from a membership option.
Case in point: Costco.
Now, smaller businesses are coming up with new, innovative models designed for their needs.
- In Texas, the Communion Neighborhood Cooperative—a restaurant, coffee shop, and co-working space—allowed families to subscribe to a program giving them four take-out meals a month. Adding a little charity to the program, they committed to donating 100 subscriptions once they reached 400 subscribers. They easily met their goal and more.
- In Minnesota, publisher Coffee House Press created a membership program that provides members with a year-round discount on products, plus access to exclusive, members-only content.
The beauty of this idea is that it can be adapted to any small business:
- Have customers subscribe to eight yearly haircuts at your salon for an overall discounted rate, or subscribe to a smoothie per week at your juice bar.
- Ask customers to chip in a one-time membership fee to gain a year-round discount at your retail store.
Offer Discounts to Customers Shopping Small
How else can you compete with big-box retailers and major corporations?
In Chicago, Pilsen Community Books offers 10% off to customers who show proof of a cancelled Amazon prime membership.
There are countless other ways to reward and encourage customers who shop small and shop local.
Some creative ideas include:
- Team up with other local businesses to create a “scavenger hunt” using a physical card or a digital app. Ask customers to try and patronize each participating location within a set period (two weeks or a month). Offer a small incentive to customers who can show that they’re participating—and a larger one to those who complete their card.
- Do a swap with a nearby business. For example, if a local yoga studio has a membership option, offer a small discount to members at your store. In exchange, ask the studio to stock a few of your artisan items in their boutique.
These kinds of partnerships can create a thriving local community where business leaders lift each other up.
Up Your Social Media Engagement
You probably already maintain a social media strategy. But with more and more customers making purchases and booking appointments directly from their apps, it can pay to increase your efforts online. By developing a stronger social media strategy, you’ll have a better chance at reaching your ideal customer.
In Houston, Cactus Music was able to thrive during the Texas shutdown by doubling down on their social media channels. Employees curated items around specific events—Bob Dylan’s birthday, for example—which boosted customer engagement and resulted in more sales.
If your social media accounts are a little rusty, start by updating your store hours so that they’re accurate!
Then, consider the following strategies:
- Host a takeover – Do you have a customer with legions of followers? A local celeb who’s enthusiastic about your wares? Let them “take over” your account for an hour or a week. This can help bring their followers to your account, and boost engagement among your existing customers.
- Go live – Help customers find out exactly what’s in stock without stopping by with a live video. You could also demonstrate the prep for your restaurant’s daily special or host a live workout class. After the live event, customers can continue to share and repost the resulting video.
- Run a promotion – You don’t have to use paid ads to run promotions on your social media accounts. Instead, host a competition where users can enter a raffle by tagging two or three friends. Likewise, you could run a promotion for the first ten customers to show up at your brick-and-mortar store. (Just be sure to keep social distancing guidelines in mind).
When in doubt, there are two aspects to remember about the content you post: be authentic and stay consistent.
Keep Offering Events Online
While many businesses are eager to get back to “normal,” hopefully this time has shown you the many ways that you can connect with customers online. From virtual mixology classes to book clubs and beyond, there are more ways than ever to connect with your target audience in your local community.
If you’re not already offering virtual services, this can be a great time to start. From interior design consultations via FaceTime to live cooking demos, there’s an online service option for nearly every business.
Start or continue hosting online events to:
- Gain and retain new customers, near and far
- Provide accessible events for people who may choose to continue quarantining
- Highlight new products and services
- Charge a ticket price for relatively low-cost, easy-to-plan events
If it’s safe in your area, you could even host an event with a small audience and a livestream to people in other locations.
Keep Customers Posted
Many of your neighbors got through the worst of the pandemic with the help of local businesses—whether they were able to order much-needed items through curbside pickup, keep fit with virtual classes, or receive donated food and supplies from give-back initiatives.
Now, some are more inclined than ever to help local businesses thrive.
One suggestion? Share some of your own journey and struggles as a small business owner with your community and target market.
- Use a newsletter to write down the basics of how your business model has changed. What are you trying out? What’s working? How has customer feedback helped shape these choices?
- Let customers know how they can support you. Are you looking for a local volunteer to help you refresh your logo or spruce up your store space? Or are you looking for new members to your membership program? Your loyal customers may be happy to help or join!
- You can also share your journey in a blog or on your Nextdoor page. Your musings can remind customers who have been meaning to stop by and help start conversations with other local entrepreneurs.
This kind of authentic sharing can deepen the bond between your business and its customers.
Building a Stronger Local Community, Business by Business
As a small business owner, it can be concerning when a circumstance like COVID-19 significantly impacts foot traffic and profits. Now, as you reopen, your success depends on maintaining your current connections and forging an even stronger network within your local community.
Using the above strategies in combination, you’ll begin to broaden your customer base and reach your target market. From there, it’s only a matter of time until word-of-mouth spreads.
Remember to keep your ears open for feedback and your eyes on the brighter horizon ahead.
Sources:
Communion Neighborhood Cooperative. Family Meal Membership. http://www.communioncooperative.com/family-meal-membership
Pilsen Community Books. https://pilsencommunitybooks.com/
ABC13. Cactus Music gets creative to attract customers amid COVID-19 pandemic. https://abc13.com/cactus-music-covid-19-coronavirus-houston-store/6215303/
Coffee House Books. Membership. https://coffeehousepress.org/pages/membership
Joanne Klee Marketing. What Restaurants and Businesses Can Do to Attract Customers During the Global Crisis. https://joannekleemarketing.com/insights/what-restaurants-can-do-to-attract-customers-during-the-global-crisis
Claim your free Business Page to get started on Nextdoor. For resources on how to use Nextdoor to stay connected with your local customers, pertinent news affecting businesses, and more, follow us at @nextdoorbusiness on Facebook.
