Associations have been dealt a difficult hand in this crisis— they have to protect their members in an increasingly difficult economic climate. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) and franchises are often under-digitized, which positions them to be hit especially hard as many consumers shop online to minimize their risk of Coronavirus exposure.
According to LinkedIn chief economist Karin Kimbrough, 75% of the economy is based on face-to-face business interactions. These businesses are now rushing to convert to a more social distancing-friendly, online-focused strategy as they navigate the societal changes the COVID crisis has brought on. As many businesses sell their products, services, or consultations more online, it’s essential to keep up.
How can you help your members stay afloat? A good first step is to ensure that businesses have the knowledge and tools they need to enhance their online presence. How can we help? Nuvi Local makes it easy to keep online business information updated, gather feedback, and share content strategically, so SMB’s can not only get online swiftly but will experience success more quickly.
Update
Nuvi Locate makes it easy to instantly update business information to 60+ directories like Yelp, Google, and more. Having correct information on multiple platforms will help businesses appear in local searches, expanding awareness of their services.
If a business is experiencing a change in hours, temporary closure, or offering limited services, posting this information on any platform where a customer may look is essential. Updates to the featured message section are particularly important during this time, as they create a space to keep customers informed about the measures a business is taking to protect them from the virus.
As people limit the amount that they leave their houses due to Covid-19, customers are doing more online research before they shop. Make sure they have access to the right information.
Get Feedback
Reviews are one of the top influences on a consumer’s decision when browsing online. Along with extra online research on a business’ hours and services, customers will also be reading reviews to ensure that every trip outside is worthwhile. To get a step ahead, it is important to proactively respond to reviews and solicit feedback from fans and repeat customers.
Nuvi Review gives businesses easy and indispensable tools for reputation management. It combines inboxes from 29 different review platforms and allows users to view and manage them through one easy interface— because busy SMB owners have enough to do already without the added work of logging into 29 different websites. They can also create custom review invitation templates that will encourage their customers to leave reviews. All review invites are trackable, so business owners can tell when they are opened and completed.
Listening to feedback can help businesses reduce customer churn by showing them what their customers want from them so they have the opportunity to provide it. At this point in time, it is crucial for businesses to keep in touch with loyal customers.
Share Relevant Messages
Staying in touch with customers extends beyond the review process. In order to keep them fully engaged, interested, and loyal to a brand it helps to have an active social media account. But this seems like a lot to take on for small and newly digitizing businesses, right?
That’s where Nuvi Local comes in! With our new Smart Social feature, businesses can upload images and captions that will be automatically scheduled and posted at days and times identified by our data for peak engagement. The process only takes minutes but can deliver months of social content, so business owners can focus on running the show.
Helping your members to survive the crisis will improve your reputation and your loyalty. We can help! We're currently offering limited time, free access to Nuvi’s Local program to association’s SMB clients and we’d love to work with you to get them what they need. Set up a demo to learn more about how we can help you support the local businesses in your network.