This is the second part to my Pandemic Business Rescue Plan for small and medium sized businesses. If you haven’t worked through Part 1 – head over and look at that one before you start on this one. 

The objective of this two-part plan is to help you focus on the things that will make you stronger and put a positive mindset back into your workforce and workspace. You will come out of this lockdown, and with this work – you will be ready for when business gets back to normal (whatever normal looks like after this).

How to use this plan

Make sure you have completed the tasks for Part 1 – as this plan builds on the activities generated in that plan.

Much like with Month 1, I have created a Google Sheet for this part’s work which you can download and work with (giving you templates to help with the tasks and to-do’s in this blog post). The download link is at the bottom of this post.

By tackling Part 2’s focus and activities – you will gain:

1. A clear map for what you can sell during this time
2. A solid list of content that you need to create to bolster the testimonial content you have already created with product/service related content
3. Start to get the message out that you are available to work with

Part 2

This has been set for looking at during the first two months your business has been in lockdown, but still relevant regardless of where you are now. Your Government has more than likely closed down much of non-essential business. In your first 4 to 6 weeks, you would have worked out what your new normal is going to be in the short term, so now we get down to some more serious actions to take for the medium term.

The theme for this part to the plan is: BEING COMMERCIAL. Recovering your value and putting your offer out there.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVES:

Following on from Part 1’s work, now we need to nail down some short term objectives which will help to drive your activities on digital marketing. Work through these questions:

1. If you have an income stream right now – which products or services are linked to that income? List the products / services, their price point and the lifetime value of a typical client who buys the product. (Start to complete the table on the sheet called: ‘Income Generation’)

2. With the information from the above, note down which ideal customers/clients (or Avatars) buy the product/service (still on same table). If you haven’t done a full avatar exercise in your business yet – read my post on this.

3. Now identify what your sales process is for each of the these products/service (and by avatar):

• ENQUIRY: How do people contact you if they are interested? (Email, phone, contact form)
• QUALIFIER: What is your level 1 qualifying step (i.e. how do you qualify your ideal customer/client?) You may have a Discovery Call that people book to have with you, a questionnaire that someone has to fill in, or you have a face to face meeting. (This depends on your service / product)
• CALL TO ACTION: for enquiries, and for your qualifier activity?

(Note: I have filled in some examples for you in the Income Generation sheet, so you can see what I mean)

Now you should have a good idea of which services or products you are going to focus on for this period of time, and which are the better income drivers for you long-term.

TO-DO’s

Here are your to-do’s for this month (they are in the Google Sheet):

1. Look at which product / service and therefore ideal customer is your best chance of converting to a great lead / enquiry for the next three months. (You may be lucky and have two – try and choose a low priced one and a higher price one.) Start to complete the sheet called: “Profit Target Table”.
2. If you have done your full avatar exercise, then pull out a short description of each of the avatars that you are focussing on. (E.g. Sam, 24yrs old, ambitious graduate). If you haven’t done your exercises, then just try and make it up (you know your clients).
3. Next, take your notes from “How I Serve” Table from Month 1 and fill in the columns for the pains that each avatar feels, and then how you solve these pains.
4. Then jot down the phrases they use to describe the benefits they experience.
5. After you have done that, I want you to focus on the call to action phrase(s) you will use for each avatar. Complete the ‘sales process’ columns on “Profit Target Table”.
6. Using the sheet called: “Added Value People” – make a list of different professionals or supplementary/complementary businesses who add more value to what you do (but don’t DO what you do), and will already be the kinds of businesses or experts your audiences will also be looking to for advice, products or support. Example: if you are an HR Consultant, do you work with a Health and Safety specialist, Healthcare provider or Environmental Health Specialist who you may bring in for special projects or normally refer clients to?
7. Next to each of these professionals list which topics will be burning ones for your audiences (a frequently asked question, a common occurring issue, etc) and which you could talk to this person about.
8. Now you need to contact the person and see if they are interested in being interviewed. If you can get them on camera – that would be the most ideal. (You could do this either as a recorded video – you could do a Zoom call and record it – then download the MP4 file which you can then share on social media. OR you could do a Live interview – but you would need to put some effort into promoting the Live event – much like you would for an in-person event. This will help to heighten the buzz around the live interview.)

CONTENT CREATION

Here are some tasks for you to create content to share on your social media channels and in email campaigns to your list. You are now going to make notes in the columns for ‘Content Creation’ on the “Profit Target Table”.

In Part 1, I got you to focus on creating content that centred around the feedback you have received from your customers/clients (sourced from your testimonials). The graphics, text and possibly videos you created for those can now be banked in your content bank (to be used for scheduling – which ensures that you will regularly share these over time and in amongst your other content).

For this part, I want you to be more strategic about how you attract more of your ideal customers/clients that you can focus on, during these months of the pandemic. To do this you are going to drill down each avatar’s needs / pains and create really helpful, useful content that will be of value to them.

NOTE: you are not going to make this content all about YOU. This is about your customer/client – so keep that in mind. Put yourself in their shoes, so that you can really speak TO them.

1. Go to the “Profit Target Table”. You will see three columns marked: Blog, Video and Interview. Work through each avatar and their pains and jot down notes in each of these columns:

• BLOG: what topics could you write about?
• VIDEO: what videos could you create based on the topics you have identified? (Perhaps this can accompany your blog post, or they are standalone.)
• INTERVIEW: if you have a podcast, then you could think of this in audio terms – otherwise you could do an interview via your blog or video (ideally both and/or cross purpose through both mediums). Could you interview someone on the topic(s) you have identified? Someone who is highly complementary to your expertise and your audience would find of most value.

2. Writing:

Create a Word or Page document and flesh out the topic properly. I have two blog posts that will be helpful here if you need extra support:

• Top Tips for the Perfect Blog Post (relates to the content)
• Optimising Blog Posts (relates to the uploading to your website)

Be sure to tailor your call to action (CTA) at the end of your blog post to your phrases you have on the “Profit Target Table” – and to which level of your sales process you want the reader to come in at (i.e. just an enquiry, or more of a qualified lead).

3. Videos:

As with any videos, try and think through what you want to say. Keep it simple, clear and to the point. Do not ramble. Remember to keep your call to action as either to: go and read the blog post, or to “[insert phrase here]” (matching to sales process columns in your “Profit Target Table”).

Ideas of the kinds of videos you can do:

• An “intro video” (up to 5mins long) which talks about the blog post that you have written and why it is a good one to read
• Choose one or two nuggets from your blog post – and then do a video for each nugget. (Up to 3 mins for each nugget)
• Record short pan videos (5 to 10 secs) and take quick images – which you can possibly use in Stories (to help drive interest to your blog post)

4. Interviews:

You could have some fun with this, or at least think outside of the box. Start with looking at the list of people you have pulled together in your “Added Value People”. Decide if you are going to do these as a video, podcast (if you have one) or as a guest blog post.

Some things to think about:

• If you did do a video interview (e.g. record a Zoom interview): you could then convert this into an interview style blog post and create shorter videos of the longer one to clip certain parts of it. You can use these to help promote the content and get more people to watch the full video and/or read the blog post
• If you do a Live interview with the person, make sure that you think about promoting the date of the Live well in advance for anyone who wants to be there Live with you (through posts on social media, email campaigns and within your networking meetings). Once the interview is complete – it will be recorded as well – so be sure to create a blog post based on the interview (as with the example above for the recorded one). Also do some clips from the video to drive people to the interview again afterwards (nothing is stopping you to promote it after the fact as well).

PART 2 WINS

If you invest the time in doing these tasks and jobs, by the end of this work you will:

• Feel productive – because you’ll be getting some of the types of things done that you usually leave for others to do (or your social media manager has been begging you to get done for ages)!
• Be getting the kind of communication out there which will start to get your engines running again and get your audiences to return their focus to business and start conversations which will lead to business in the future.
• Have more planned content going out, as opposed to static viral images or quotes, or regurgitated content which just bores your audience.