How to work remotely and promote your business while in lockdown

Many businesses are now being thrust into the world of working remotely, home office life and needing to somehow run and promote business without usual networking tactics of sales meetings, attending events and meeting clients at the local coffee shop.

As a result, we’ve asked the team at Argon to put together a list of things you could be doing to improve your business operations over the months ahead.

Use your website to let your customers know how you are

By now most people would have received email or social media notifications from other businesses, clients and suppliers notifying them of their COVID-19 policy and, potentially, how their business is planning to survive.

Your website is a great place to include a persistent or ‘pop-up’ message where you can notify clients of your current position and that you are still in business. You can mention your health and safety habits and give them comfort in using your services by explaining that you and/or your team are working hard through this period to ensure you can still deliver on the products and services you offer. Get in touch with our team as we can help implement this for you.

Get serious about how you manage your emails

If you haven’t done so already, upgrade to business-grade email solutions which can sync between multiple devices to ensure you don’t miss any leads while you work from home. It’s important to be able to access your emails seamlessly from your phone or other devices when you’re away from the office, so that you stay connected and in control. Check in with our team for any assistance—we’d love to help.

Get your files in the sky

Get your file storage into the cloud so that you and your team can work remotely. If that sounds difficult or you aren’t sure which service to use (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive etc.) then we can provide support to help migrate your current onsite data into the cloud.

Remote workstation access

It’s possible to access your work PC remotely from your home office, just as if you were working from the actual office. Sounds like magic doesn’t it? Don’t worry, we can help get this set up for you.

Insert pandemic antivirus joke here

If home devices are now accessing your business data, ensure you have antivirus programs which can be remotely managed and maintained on all these new devices. Ensure all remote notebooks are well protected with business-grade antivirus software. There are a bunch of different solutions so feel free to chat to us if you need any assistance.

Quality equipment to make work comfortable, fun and productive

Get good hardware like laptops, desktops, monitors and printers. If working long hours on the computer, it’s important to ensure you’ve got a decent chair and a quality screen—the rule of thumb is to have the top of the screen at or slightly below eye level. We can help you select good quality products, order them for you and have them delivered to your door. We can also help set them up and ensure you and your team can operate effectively from home.

Increase engagement in your social posts

If your aim is to use social media to drive more people through to your website then make sure your posts look great. Whether you’re showcasing a service, product or just giving some tips to help your customers, you can greatly increase the visibility and engagement of your posts by ensuring they’re on-brand and look great.

We find that using the faces of you and your team can greatly increase the amount of interactions users have with your post. People these days can sniff out bad stock images so where possible use unique photos. We understand this isn’t always possible though, so stock images certainly still have their place—but we recommend doing what you can to make your posts more personal. Our talented designers can have a look at your current posts and give you some tips and recommendations, or we can take the trouble out of your hands and design them for you instead.

Get your message into your clients’ inboxes without being super annoying

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your clients. Not everyone is visiting your website or social media pages, so why not email your customers monthly with the latest news and info they might have missed out on. There are some awesome tools out there such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp that make this easy. There are huge benefits to regular email communication with clients—but avoid being spammy. Focus on keeping content fresh, relevant and compelling.

eCommerce

If you have a product or service that could be sold online, your website could be upgraded or you could have a new website built in order to facilitate transactions. Customers can browse and pay for products online, and shipping rules can be configured to ensure you cover the cost of getting the product through to your customers.

We have a client in the food industry who provides products to cafes and restaurants. Since most of his target market have had to close however, the client quickly adapted and came to us in order to add a retail store to his website. Within 24 hours of going live, his business had their first sale—a great success!

There’s plenty more you can be doing and we’ll push more ideas out each week. If you have a unique challenge or an opportunity that you aren’t sure how best to leverage, please reach out and talk to us as we’re passionate about helping anyone we can through this unique time.