Recently, a global pandemic that swept across the entire world has forced many nations to enforce a lockdown. Businesses had to close their doors to customers to prevent the further spread of the deadly virus.
Here are some ways that can help your business be more resilient to pandemics and other future crises:
Expand How Customers Can Access Your Products
If you want to see growth in your customer base and sales, you need to offer your products in ways that will be convenient for them. Many people are primarily purchasing online nowadays. Although you take pride in in-store experiences, you are missing out on customers who would rather order their necessities through the internet and while in the safety of their own homes.
Diversifying your services will increase your sales. Contact a local delivery company to enable you to send your products to customers directly to their front doors. Curbside pickup is also an option. It is a way for your business to ensure the continuation of operations even if one or two services are incapacitated.
Build Your Online Presence
When COVID-19 struck, many businesses realized how important being engaged to their customers is through the internet. The internet has become very important to attract old and new customers before the pandemic, but more so during when restrictions are made to limit face-to-face transactions.
Since hosting public events is barred in many places around the world, you need to beef up your digital marketing strategy. Think of other ways you can reach out to consumers if they cannot physically go to your stores.
Numerous brands over the past couple of months started doing conferences, tutorials, and webinars over Zoom or Facebook Live. Consumers consumed these types of content while stuck indoors.
Do not stop producing videos, photographs, and blog posts once the pandemic is over. Continue doing it so that, when the next crisis hits, you already have a strong online portfolio.
Start a Rainy Day Fund
There are disasters that, no matter what you do, cannot be prevented. Do not ignore the possibility that another pandemic or a recession will put the world into a halt once again. Prepare for such instances by keeping reserves or savings. Your rainy day fund should be able to cover extra expenses, including employee salary, even if you are not making enough sales.
Create New Policies to Prepare for the Future
The ability to survive and thrive in the face of adversity is a valuable trait not just for individuals but also for businesses. Reevaluate your own internal processes and create policies that will enable your business to respond, adapt, and evolve to events as soon as they happen.
While you do not know the challenges that the future will bring, having a plan in place to prepare you for all possible scenarios can save your business. For example, redundancy in manufacturing or supply will give you opportunities to continue serving people if a factory has unexpectedly closed down. Establishing a crisis management team, which includes all types of people with different roles and perspectives, will enable you to figure out a way out of any problem.
As soon as the crisis is over, sit down and list down everything that you have done correctly, what did not work, and what you should have done differently. The coronavirus is unlikely to be the last pandemic that the human race will experience. You need to be able to reflect on this period and be prepared. Anything can happen at any time.