Transcript: Christian Business Strategies for the Corona Virus Slowdown

Hi, I'm Loveto Nazareth and I am a small business owner. And here are five steps you can take today to keep yourself free and your business safe from the coronavirus situation. First, keep yourself safe and informed. Subscribe to all the news channels you want, but watch the news. Stay informed of the current developments of the coronavirus situation. But please stay off WhatsApp groups. They spread random rumors of about COVID-19 and it will only make you more paranoid and negative. At this time, you need to surround yourself with positivity and you will see that your entire demeanor will change. Your family life and your business will change for the positive too. Point number two, stay in touch with your customers. Now, your customers are the most important people in your life right now. after your core family and your family and friends. These guys are the guys keeping the lights on in your house and the food on the table of your house. So make sure you're in touch with them constantly, informing them of your current situation and making sure all their requirements are being met and managed by your team effectively. Some of the most effective ways you can stay in touch with your current customers right now are obviously the first one is a phone call. All of your customers are just a phone call away. So call them to inquire how they are doing and how are they managing this crisis. You need to be proactive and you need to ask them if you can help them in any way. Second, email. You need to be in constant touch with your clients through email. You can send them a group mail to all your partners, vendors and distributors, informing them of all the key changes you are making to your organization in order to support them better and to respond to the current situation. But most importantly, you need to reassure them that they can expect the best service from you and your team for whatever they are working with you on. It could be media, it could be social, it could be distribution, It could be anything. WhatsApp is your best friend in times like today. Now, it can be used for good. It can be used for bad. But as a small business owner, you can use WhatsApp for business already. If you've not been using it, you've been definitely living under a rock somewhere. Get on it immediately. It's really amazing. And it's suitable for small business owners like yourself. Come on. If Jeff Bezos has a personal WhatsApp for business account, which is known only for 150 people in the world, then what's stopping you? You know, video calling. Video calling is the best way to stay in touch and reach out to your customers in this time. And especially with the home lockdown, we also have incorporated it into our workflow and also into our website. Our customers absolutely love it. You can actually check it out. Go to our website, www.prism-me.com and book an online video chat with me or any one of my team or digital marketing advisors with one click only. The call will be made as per your convenience. And that is extremely important. The call should be made as per your customer's convenience and not yours. So don't get me wrong. It's the customer's experience that is most important. So the customer defines the time that he wants the video call and you give it to him. Another very big step for you to do right now is to bring your business online. There are literally hundreds of options for you to take your business online. But here are our top five based on personal experience and our practice within Prism. First is Zoom. Zoom provides a fantastic communication platform where you can have all your staff work from home and then report on every aspect to a common video chat. You can also share screens or have group meetings and calls. You can even have whiteboard brainstorming sessions like we do. We really use Zoom a lot at Prism. Another platform we use very heavily is called Monday. Monday is a fantastic platform where you can have all your staff work on it and work remotely. As a manager, you can create tasks for your team, have the team work on it, and then report back to you on the platform. You can even create tasks, measure productivity, and even track employees' workload and workflow from the platform itself. Now, to be honest, it's a bit expensive, but I feel that it is worth it. A little cheaper option is Bittrex So Bittrex is another CRM that you can use to create workflows for your company and manage tasks and projects via collaborative tasking It's a little bit less expensive, but offers a flat rate for companies and small and medium businesses. So that is a very good thing that you can use to your benefit. Now, Zoho is our favorite CRM tool. It has so many softwares and features that you can pick and choose to use. You don't have to take the entire platform in its entirety, Zoho One, but you can pick and choose what you want. It's free and it's paid, which means it's a freemium service. So it has little or no competition from the big players like Salesforce, HubSpot and other costly CRM platforms. You can start on it free and then upgrade as you want to go along. OK, another very important thing that you need to realize when you're dealing with clients is to have a plan, have a customer service plan. Now, a customer service plan is literally the simplest thing to create. All you have to do is track your individual customers requirement per week and then create a workflow to execute that task list. Then you need to assign your team to execute that task list and let them collaborate on it. So the most important part of this is that you need to bring your customers in onto the servicing plan and have a clear picture drawn out for them so that your team will be working remotely. And you will have to understand that there will be a little lag in customer service. And this has to be explained to the client so that delivery planning. But, you know, be honest with them. because of collaboration tools like WhatsApp and all the other ones I've said before, your team and your customer are literally a WhatsApp message away. So things can move slowly and smoothly. What I'd like you to do is if you would like a copy of our own customer service plan, I'm happy to share it with you. And I'll also on YouTube, I'll put a link at the bottom of the video where you can actually click it and you can get it and download it for absolutely free. Take a look at some feedback from our clients that absolutely love the way we interact with them and are always present on WhatsApp for any service related questions. I would 100% recommend Prism. The full team there are very supportive of their companies that they are working with. Throughout the project, they are always adaptive in terms of whatever comes across in terms of the challenges of the project, which is very positive for me as a client. What we do is we provide our clients with an action plan for the month right at the start of the month or sometimes even before the month starts so that the deliverables are clearly defined. And more importantly, client expectations are understood even before the month starts. Now, this starts with the monthly client briefing. Now, you can do it in different ways, depending on your line of business or your business protocols. OK, you can have a client meeting, client briefing meeting on Zoom or any of the video sharing platforms. And in this meeting, you can define the following. First of all, what you need to do is you have to create a list of things that you want your clients to understand. So in our case, with our clients, it's normally a content calendar for the month or it's a week-wise activity sheet where we break the entire month in two weeks in four modules, four or five modules and break it down as far as an activity sheet with defined timelines. You can also do picture and video planning. Now you're all at home. So you'd have it. That's a challenge. Outdoor video photo shoots or video shoots are a very big challenge and need to plan be planned in advance. Fresh release planning is something that you can do easily. Digital marketing calendars and content planning or even for that matter, SEO activity sheets and ranking reports can be done so easily with our activity planner. If you have if you're working with a design agency, then a design activity plan needs to sort out. You also need to plan resourcing from your team as well as the client's team. How are you going to complete these tasks? So as I said before, there's a free stuff alert. Check this out. We would like you to take our entire content calendar and activity planning format that we use to manage all our 150 clients. And for that, all you have to do is subscribe to the box next to this video. As I said earlier, the link is also in the below description. So if you want to go to our website or subscribe for this free awesome giveaway we happy to send it across to you It will really help your agency or it will help your clients to deliver the kind of things that they want Our clients absolutely love it Now you will also need to do a weekly catch with your clients to find out if there are any tactical issues that need to be solved or urgently pending stuff that your team is lagging on. Make sure that there are no gaps. We follow the principle of leaving no man or client behind. So weekly catch up meetings are extremely important. I cannot understate the importance of that. Your reporting structure to the client needs to be really simple. We have a theory of one. Okay. The one principle is the most underutilized in the client servicing business so here it is for you to understand. Now your client is a human hopefully and humans love simplicity. The more simple your reporting structure is the simpler is it for your client to work with and it's so easy to manage. We have a very simple structure in place. Every client is serviced by one client servicing manager who communicates with the client on a daily and sometimes even an hourly basis to discuss their needs and deliver as per their requirements. The client manager then works with the creative team in-house or any third-party vendor from the client side or our side to make this work happen. That's how we are able to deliver the project to the client in the time period mentioned and agreed upon. Now, you know the saying that when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, it spoils the broth. In this case, the kitchen is your team and the relationship between the client and the agency. So this is exactly the problem. We follow the K-I-S-R-S. Kissers theory. Keep it simple. Real simple. Okay. Repeat after me. Keep it simple, real simple. Kiss us. The last point, but definitely not the least, is what I've been always propounding to my clients. When time when business goes down, you need to start marketing more aggressively. So let's keep it real. Most businesses today have been locked down for at least 30 days, give a tip. Now, there are some non-essential businesses that are absolutely forcing their employees to work, even though the government has issued a strict lockdown protocol. But those employers will get what they deserve and their hardworking employees will soon realize that their employers don't really care for their well-being or that of their families. And soon as this virus situation is sorted, they will leave the company and those companies will lose out in the long term. But this is not what we're talking about. And we're not talking about those kinds of companies. We're talking about you, the business owner that has told his employees to stay at home, whose business is either shut down currently because your stores are shut or because your clients are not paying on time. Relax. This is a temporary situation. And remember the same. Tough times don't last. Tough people do and tough companies definitely do. So the point I'm trying to make is that let us look for the positives in this bleak situation and make the absolute most of it. There are a couple of things to remember. First of all, most of your clients and potential customers are also under lockdown. What does that benefit or how does that benefit you? That means that they spend most of their time online on the TV or on their mobiles. Now, Google has said that there has been a 98% hike in YouTube viewership as well as Facebook and Instagram. There has been more than an 80% rise in social media usage. And people have a lot of time on their hands and are scrolling through news feeds is a fun thing to do. They are either bored and need to be entertained or educated. Either ways, they are out there watching Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. They are watching videos on TikTok. They are watching people do funny things. They are laughing with them. They are trying to forget the tough and horrid situations we are in. They either want to learn to upgrade their skills. So they are doing courses on Udemy. They are doing courses on other free platforms. So if they are there on the digital world, why isn't your brand? Why aren't you there with your brand online, chasing them, providing engaging, exciting content and interacting with your customers? Just as you watching this video I sure a lot of your customers are also watching this video thinking hey that a nice message You need to start advertising to these customers and make sure that they see your brand online when they are scrolling And this to manage to engage them during this lockdown period, you can be sure of them coming to your store when this lockdown is lifted. It's common sense. It's basic human psychology. We go towards things that we choose to consume things that we know and we have seen before. So you need to start advertising your products and services online and you need to do it now. You can do it with funny engaging videos, with witty graphics, animated posts on social media. You basically need to have a strong content calendar that aims to excite and engage. You can also choose to educate with a very clear message of support and strength. Positivity should pour out from your brand just as you're watching this video and feeling happy about the current situation, you need to make sure that your targeting is on point and that your advertising generates the kind of visits to your website that you want. Now, that's another thing. When was the last time you actually went on to your own website? Remember, all your customers will only go to your site to get info about your brand as your stores are closed right now. So if your website is really bad or it sucks, your customers will only think that your brand is as bad as your website. So one massive tip I would give you. First of all, look at your own website. Look inwards. Check out your brand. Check out the rankings for SEO. See the places where you can improve. Use this time not as a downtime for you to just be playing cards or watching videos, but use this time to do spring cleaning on your website or to completely redesign a new website. Now, I'm sorry about this, but this is a shameless plug. We also design amazing websites. Hint, hint. So, but again, if your website can be redesigned in any way that really starts to rock and roll for your customers, that time should be now. Now is the best time to do it because you will get great rates. We personally, Prism is offering a 50% discount on all our service rates. if you contact us with the word, make my website great again. I'm sure you've heard Mr. Trump say this, but he is talking about America. I'm talking about your website. Plug over. Hands up. So back to the point. If your website can be redesigned to rank better on Google, or if you feel like running an SEO campaign, this is the best time to do it. Because by the time this crisis ends, and it will, your website would be ranking number one on Google and you would be getting a ton of new business and leads. Anyway, long story short, that's all the time we have for this very short podcast and vlog. So if you like it, please subscribe to my company's channel, Prism Social, and also catch me on my personal podcast, Lovetto Nazareth, aka also known as The Digital Panda. And call that because of my dark circles around my eyes. if you didn't figure that out already. That's why I got this misnomer. If you'd like to WhatsApp me, any kind of remedy for this, I'd be very appreciative and very grateful. Please do. My WhatsApp number is 00971-5585-00095. Okay? You can WhatsApp me directly and give me feedback on my videos. You can ask me any questions and I'm absolutely happy to message you back. If I don't respond, most probably because I'm sleeping or I'm making another video or doing some kind of thing. Please check out my personal podcast. I also write songs, poetry and do a lot of crazy adventures. Obviously, at the times where I am not stuck into the house. I do scuba diving, I do skydiving and I like to talk and write about digital marketing stuff. Okay, so finally, thank you for watching this video and if you like it, please subscribe to my channel. And if you'd like to be notified of any new videos, please click the little red bell below. That will keep you notified of all my new videos. So God bless you. Stay at home, stay safe and more importantly, stay tuned to this channel for my next vlog. Cheers and God bless. Thank you.