| Good morning marketers, how are you communicating with customers during the crisis?
There’s no doubt that social distancing has severely impacted day-to-day operations for local businesses – and for their customers, too. During our local search edition of Live with Search Engine Land last Friday, Adam Dorfman, director of product management at Reputation.com along with other members of the local search community shared communication strategies to help small business owners keep customers informed. Here’s a rundown: Use your site to inform customers. “It should be front and center, because everybody wants to know, are you, at the very least, keeping your own employees protected — all that sort of information,” Dorfman said, recommending that local businesses make their COVID-19-related announcements and information prominent and easily accessible on their sites. Be creative with email. Consumers have already received the first wave of coronavirus-related emails from businesses. Resist messaging your customers again with bland or irrelevant response updates. Update your Google My Business profile. “You can update the name, the description and Posts are going to be really helpful,” said Krystal Taing, listings management product specialist for RIO SEO. She pointed to a few ways local businesses can use Google My Business to relay information. Seek deeper engagement via social media. “If you want to talk about clever COVID messaging … Instagram is where I see the best of the best,” said Dorfman. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the follower counts are growing because of this … they don’t have a business to run necessarily day-to-day, so they have all of this time and resources to put into social media.” Incorporate offline messaging. Putting up a storefront notice with contact info can show customers you’re still within reach. However, if you typically receive high call volume, keeping customers on hold for a long time can backfire. Consider directing customers to your website, where you can publish complete details and address their concerns without keeping them on hold. There’s more below, including our daily mindfulness exercise and an update on Facebook’s new desktop Messenger app. Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor | 