10 things I’ve learnt from Coronavirus.
Written by Ryan Jenkins: Founder / CEO - hg皇冠直播在线观看免费软件
1. A great team is everything.
Our team has been working from home for the last 2 weeks. Since decentralising, the team has been amazing. Everyone has been working extremely hard to ensure that communication stays up, their attitude is up-beat, their commitment to the business and their customers is at an all time high. It has made this transition so much easier.
2. Focus on high impact initiatives
Now that there’s a lot more uncertainty in the market, it’s more important than ever to focus on initiatives that are going to have the highest impact. As a leadership team we have been using some basic, but powerful ways to get quick wins and aim to remove anything that has little to no immediate positive impact on our customers or the business. By using a simple tool like a priority matrix, it can help your team and business with this.
3. Value, Value, Value..
Some of our customers and partners have been unfortunately forced to shut their doors, layoff all of their staff and try to hibernate. I can’t imagine how that would feel. For the last 3 weeks we have built a digital strategy for all of our customers to help them make the most of a tough time. When major changes occur in the world or the economy, it’s important to try and focus on the opportunity. Sometimes, this is hard to see immediately, but if you take the time to strategise rather than be overwhelmed you will find it. Businesses are in one of 3 categories.
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Closed (events, weddings, etc.)
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Limited by the changes (cafes, restaurants, trade services)
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Booming because of the changes (online stores with essential items, supermarkets, accountants, etc.)
Regardless of which one of these scenarios you find your business in, it’s important to have a plan of attack and be able to effectively identify the opportunities.
4. Working from home is not that bad.
I’m not a big fan of working from home, personally. When we made the decision to work from home, I was not looking forward to it at all, in fact I was feeling pretty negative overall. I packed up all of my work stuff, took it home and set it up in our home office area. I have a new puppy and also a young daughter, they were very excited about the prospect of seeing me everyday. Once I set everything up, it became very apparent to me that it was not going to work, here’s why.
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The area was too open, and there was no disconnection from the rest of my house.
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It didn’t feel like I had my own “work area”.
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It was noisy.
This made me decide to move into our guest room to help with the separation. This worked much better for me as I could close the door, I had natural light, and more importantly I had a quiet space to help me focus. The lesson here is that although it is great to have family around, giving yourself a work space so that you can knuckle down and concentrate when it matters is a great tool in keeping focused.
5. Fear of the unknown is paralysing.
The media have been on the coronavirus band wagon for almost a month now. Peddling the message of fear to the community. We have seen panic buying, fights over toilet paper, freezers sold out, being told to buy 2 weeks worth of groceries, and the list goes on. Fear is an emotion that helps humans with self-preservation. It’s a primitive emotion that often will make your brain react very quickly. I’m not saying that it’s not good to be fearful sometimes, but at times like these, it’s important to try and not be ruled by it. Taking the time to think before you act will be more beneficial, rather than becoming crippled by fear, we need to take the time to consider our decisions.
6. Online is a powerful tool.
Google
,
Facebook
, Twitter, Instagram and most other search and social media platforms are experiencing peak usage in the last month. News outlets, politicians and government agencies have used the internet to push their message to millions. Most of the announcements are live streamed through
Facebook
, the Government has just launched a Coronavirus app, and has seen more than 500k downloads in less than 12 hours. If you’re a business owner, you have a very captive audience right now and are taking the time to consider what you want your customers and future customers to know about your business. If you’re running a restaurant or cafe and you have recently started doing takeaway / delivery then use social media to let your customers know.
7. Take the time to do the things you never had time to do.
Whether you have projects around the house or work projects that you have struggled to find time for. Now is a great time to get these projects done. With demand and search volumes that are down in certain areas, we have seen customers re-allocate spend into websites,
conversion
,
content
and
SEO
. The slingshot effect of the coronavirus could be massive. Once Australia is back open for business people will be desperate to get out and start their lives again. Here at hg皇冠直播在线观看免费软件 we took time out last week to finish our new
website
project. We first started this project over 6 months ago, but because it was an internal project, it’s hard to prioritise it over “client work”. We are super proud of the site and we have seen a huge spike in traffic and rankings since launch. If you want some help with your business, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Check out the new site here:
www.digitaleagles.com.au
Ranking Spike! Up 1712 ranking positions.
8. The best defence is offence..
We have learnt from previous economic downturns that the businesses that are the most proactive will be the most successful on the other side. Speaking with business owners over the last few weeks, I know that it’s hard to see that now is a good time to invest. And, to be honest, it’s not the right time for every business. But for some businesses it’s the perfect time. If you are still able to trade and you have the cashflow to keep the business afloat, investing in a new website,
conversion rate optimisation
or
SEO
will help your business be much stronger in the future.
9. Play your position.
Focus on the area of your business that you will have the biggest impact. Now more than ever, it’s critical that you and your teams are being focused on delivering as much value as possible to your business and your customers. Help your team build out daily and weekly plans, review their performance daily to ensure that they are having the biggest impact and achieving the best outcomes. Working remotely can be hard for people to stay focused, and without measurement of activity and outcomes you will create ambiguity.
10. Stay positive!
This will blow over. No-one really knows when.. But it will. Australia is doing a great job at controlling the curve and new cases are declining. Fingers crossed new cases remain on the decline. By focusing on “controlling the controllables” and staying positive with your team, you will set your business up to make the most of this situation.
Thanks for reading. Stay safe everyone!