Like many businesses, we’ve lost clients in the last 8 weeks. It started with a rash of cancelations in the first 2 weeks, typically from clients who could not service (and therefore had not reason to recruit) new customers of their own. In those first 2 weeks I thought the sky was falling, but thankfully things have settled down since then and we have not lost another client since.
I’m hopeful that some of our lost customers will come back once states re-open and they can start selling their products and services again. Some likely will, but others will not. That’s the unfortunate reality of the world we now live in. But many of our clients have stayed with us and are still advertising, and it has forced me take a deep dive into how they’re making things work during this incredibly difficult time.
By and large, our clients who have been able to stay in business have had to adapt to a new way of doing things. For professional services clients, such as law firms, that means adopting video conferencing as the primary way to service their customers during this time. Courts and offices are closed, but the internet is still functioning. From our end, we have updated their websites as well as their Google Ads campaigns with this new information, and it has paid dividends. Many of our attorney clients are just as busy as they were before the shutdowns occurred. Getting the “we’re open and able to serve you remotely” message out to prospective clients has been a lifesaver.
For other clients, the answer has been to offer aggressive promotions in order to drive new business during this shutdown. After all, there’s no better way to attract new business than to offer a significant cost savings. We’ve helped our clients to design, implement, and of course market these promotions to bring new customers in the door. Many are offering larger discounts for their good and services than they normally would, but that’s the price that must be paid during a pandemic.
The take-away here is simple. In order to survive in these awful times, businesses must be flexible. They must be willing to think outside the box and offer services and discounts that they wouldn’t otherwise consider. That’s how you survive as a business during COVID-19.