This is an unusual time. The coronavirus has changed our personal lives, our work lives and the lives of almost everyone, around the world. March and April 2020 will be remembered for the next hundred years, if not longer.

Businesses are in shock. While some are obviously suffering, others are near collapse under the weight of a huge upturn in sales.

What is your situation? Have you got a handle on where you are now and where the business will be in 3 and 6 months.

If you are still working and have money coming in now, should your strategy be to look ahead three/six/twelve months and work out what you need to do now to make sure you have work and money coming in then?

If you are in one of the industries that are thriving right now (or perhaps better put as getting lots of sales right now), is it inventory you need to focus on and for marketing, what do you need to think about to make sure you keep getting sales longer term?

If your sales have dried up or you hadn't had time to build them up before the world locked down, do you need to focus your efforts on protecting the brand awareness you had and building it up so potential customers know that you exist?

It is tempting to retreat at the moment, especially if you are at home, rather than in the office and if you have children at home, it is especially easy to deal with today's tasks and not think ahead.

We aren't sure what 'ahead' with look like, are we?

Although nothing is certain now, nothing is ever certain. What we do know is that 'out of sight, out of mind' is fairly true now and under more normal conditions,

Do you want your potential customers to remember you when they need/want you?

Small businesses start with zero brand awareness. No-one outside your immediately family has any idea who you are or what you do. You may be at the bottom but the only way it up, right :)  What we do is start to tell our own network what we do and then spread it outwards from there.

Usually, as long as you keep up the effort, the awareness of your business - your brand - will grow.

Do this now. If you have been in business for years or just for weeks, treat your brand as an unknown fledgling and help it grow.

1. Pick a couple of tactics (not too many because you need to keep them up and use them over and over again).

2. Choose some key messages that are not irrelevant now (between five and ten work)

3. Use a couple of channels - email definitely and then perhaps one or two social media channels - and repeatedly send out your messages. Over and over again.

4. Send out the messages again. Seriously. If you haven't told people the same thing twenty times (that is each key message 20 times...) over the next 3-4 months, tell them it again until you have.

But I haven't got time for that!

Do what you can. Every little helps (to steal Tesco's motto).

But my audience will get fed up if I do that!

Only if they see it twenty times. Which they won't. If you send the exact same email out, some will get annoyed, so rewrite it.

You've seen your social media post reach rate, right? (If you don't know what we are talking about, please get in touch with us here.) If you have 200 followers, each individual post might reach 40 people. Of those 40 people, 20 scrolled past without noticing it. 20 will have noticed it but 19 will have forgotten it 5 seconds later.

Sorry to be so blunt but if you want people to get your message, you have to show it to them over and over and over again.

They aren't looking for it.

Our marketing agency, Write in Danderyd, builds and runs all sorts of marketing tactics for the smallest of businesses across the world.

Check out their latest post about ensuring your clients and potential clients don't forget you right now:

What to do for your business now

Instagram can deliver customers for small businesses. The key is to do what is effective and skip everything else. Do you know what you should be doing or do you feel like you might be wasting your time?

Do follower numbers matter? Not as much as you think.

Are you posting great content? Great! Now you've got 20% of the job done, spend the other 80% of your time actually doing what you need to do to build sales from Instagram.

Learn exactly what you should and shouldn't be doing to successfully run your own Instagram marketing in our online course.

In this online course, we'll work through techniques to find prospective clients on Instagram and turn them into leads (giving you their contact details) so you can turn them into clients.

Find out more and book here.

The session will suit you if you are:

• looking for more clients/customers for your small business
• have an existing Instagram account for your business
• know what a hashtag is, even if you aren't sure how they work

You will need:

• access to our online course system
• an Instagram account ready to use
• a goal: who you would like to attract to your business (be quite specific) and what step you'd like them to take next (e.g. give you their contact details by filling in a form OR buy X product)

You can expect:

• all the details in a step-by-step manner
• a chance to walk through through the techniques, with your goal in mind, to get you started
• actions that you can take next to get Instagram providing you with more clients/customers

Registration is usually only open for a short period so we can spend our time helping you throughout the course but right now, it is open: 8th April 2020 until 31st May 2020. We hope it helps.

Price: US$49 - 480kr - £42 - €44  Price now: US$29 - 280kr - £22 - €24 We hope this helps too.

We take payment in most currencies through Paypal. You don't need a Paypal account to pay by card.

Find out more and book here.