The current global pandemic has caught the entire world off guard in so many ways. For our businesses, it’s become essential to communicate our response to our customers.
For some businesses that are hardest hit by the necessity for social distancing (like restaurants), the need to communicate is essential, and the message that’s being communicated changes quickly. Have you scrapped your content calendars and had to scramble to create new messaging? You’re not alone.
When you need to get a message out to all your customers quickly, online platforms give you the ability to do that — and to update the wording when the wording needs to change. Here are a few quick ways to get your message to your customers:
Send an Email Update or Newsletter
You’ve certainly seen the emails pouring in already — it seems like every company imaginable has sent a response to COVID-19. Some of these might seem unnecessary, but it’s amazing how much a health scare like this truly impacts so many different industries. Getting an email from your bathing suit company about the virus might seem excessive — but if the company has changed its shipping policies because of the outbreak, or if they’re not able to run customer support for a while, it’s important. If you haven’t already set up a newsletter system, it’s not too late. Get in touch, and we’ll help you assess your needs.
Use Your Home Page
Not every business needs to change their home page to incorporate messaging about the COVID-19 pandemic, but those that are dramatically changing operating hours, product offerings, schedules or anything else that clients will see a change in should have a presence of the new messaging somewhere on the front page of their websites. You don’t want a client to visit your site looking for answers and give up because they don’t find what they’re looking for. Want an easy way to do that? Try adding an alert banner.
Create a COVID-19 Emergency Alert Banner
Announcing important changes where customers will definitely see them is important, but changing up your home page to do it can be tricky — it might be tough to make a change, and that change might compromise other elements of the page. On the Infomedia site, we created a COVID-19 banner that immediately communicates our response to clients. Want us to add a banner to your site? Call our Support team at 205-823-4440 and we’ll walk you through the process.
Write a Blog Outlining Your Response
Even if your COVID-19 response isn’t changing rapidly, it’s still a good idea to acknowledge the outbreak and your company’s response to it on your latest blog. And if your response is rapidly changing or escalating, frequent blog posts are even more important.
Give Up-t0-the-Minute Information through Social Media
Especially if you’re a B2C business, your social media should communicate your company’s response to COVID-19. Because this is a difficult topic and involves the health of many people across the world, it’s not appropriate to be lighthearted or jokey when writing about COVID-19. Instead, keep your posts focused on how your company is responding and how your customers will be impacted.
Create a Quick Custom Landing Page
If you’re looking for responses from your clients (like filling out a form), or if you need a static page about your company’s response to COVID-19 and a blog is not enough, a landing page might be just what you’re looking for. You can incorporate form fields and Calls to Action in a landing page, or you can simply use it to communicate information. This page can even be added to your site’s navigation so clients can easily find the information they’re looking for. (If you add an alert banner through Infomedia, we can link the banner to this page so interested customers will find it easily.)
Many of us don’t know how exactly our businesses will find their way out of this difficult situation. What we do know is that, no matter which response we choose, one essential part of that plan will be communication with our customers. Invest the time to communicate now, and you’ll be a step ahead whenever you reopen or need to change your offerings, opening times or menu. And if you want us to help you with your messaging, get started by getting a quote on custom copywriting for your business.
