How we’re helping clients adapt to COVID-19

Posted On: 18th May 2020
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Read Time: 4 Minutes
Header Adapting to COVID
With coronavirus has come a wave of challenges for businesses of all types and sizes, which we probably don’t need to remind you of. Don’t worry, we’re not here to bombard you with stats and projections, we’re here to spread messages of encouragement that businesses can and have flourished during the pandemic – but how? By the power of online business.

As a digital agency, we have been in the eye-opening position of helping clients across all industries to adapt to new social attitudes during coronavirus. From fitness instructors to fresh produce wholesalers, clients from every sector imaginable have been forced to make some pretty transformative business decisions and adapt very quickly.

With the negativity and intensity of the news adding a weight to everyone’s shoulders at the moment, we thought it would be a good time to lighten the mood and share our client’s success stories on how they’ve tackled and overcome one of the most significant events of our lifetime – and how you can too.

How our clients are adapting to the new ‘normal’

Let’s have a look at how completely opposing businesses have dealt with their own unique challenges. You may be surprised at the results…

Fresh Produce IconFresh Produce

With hotels and restaurants forced to close and nowhere to sell their stock, two fruit and vegetable wholesalers faced shutting down completely. Acting quickly, they have been able to completely pivot their services and offer home delivery to those who cannot leave the house.

Has it been a success? To improve the speed of the site and prepare the business for increased online traffic, we moved one of the client’s website onto a scalable cloud-based, high-performance hosting platform – since late-March, they have already generated revenue in excess of over £1.5 million! Whereas before both clients would never have opted for straight to public commerce, they are now considering keeping home delivery as a permanent service.

It’s not just the fresh produce industry that has had to pivot their services, with widespread closures also heavily impacting the leisure and fitness industry. How have they managed to discover new ways to connect to their audience?

Gym Industry IconGym/Fitness

With gyms and leisure centres closed and probably remaining shut for the longest period of time, we’ve been helping two contrasting clients in the industry retarget their services.

Not only is one yoga fitness instructor uplifting spirits free of charge using their shiny new website that we built in just 2 days (!), but we are now designing them a membership system to mould this opportunity into a new business – the start of something beautiful!

On the other side, a client who once specialised in home gym equipment, but was transitioning to designing and kitting out gyms, has had to switch up their business plan and turn the focus back on home equipment. Luckily, it was our previous SEO work that made this possible and, boy, have they benefited!

They’ve had more traffic in the last two weeks than the whole of last year, with over one million page views in just 10 days – though it won’t come as any surprise if, like us, you’ve felt the frustration of sold-out gym equipment across the web!

Talking of online sales, how have retailers been fairing after being forced to close their doors?

Ecommerce IconEcommerce

Like many of you reading this, one ecommerce client was forced to close their physical shop. With customers switching to online shopping, we helped them to fully optimise their Shopping Ads campaign and closely monitor market trends.

The result: they are now earning more profit than when their shop was open, just by adapting to shifting consumer trends and the surge in online shopping!

Okay, so far so good – but how are clients in the finance industry navigating the pandemic with the impact on the economy?

Finance Industry IconFinance

We’ve given one insurance broker’s pay-per-click (PPC) campaign a complete facelift after noticing changes in the market since the lockdown. By instantly reacting to slight changes in activity, we have seen their conversion rate soar to 17.39%.

It’s about finding the right audience at the right time – but what happens when your target audience are office workers?

Office Furniture IconB2B Office Furniture

With offices and workspaces predominantly closed, two clients specialising in B2B office furniture sales have had to rethink their marketing strategies, meaning a complete overhaul of SEO and PPC targeting. By creating new targeted pages and campaigns, one client has seen chair sales sky-rocket and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) drastically increase.

The pandemic has also forced clients to make changes to catch up with what competitors are offering. For one B2B client, we’ve been able to quickly push forward the installation of a new online payment facility (Stripe) on their site to compete with other online stores, letting customers buy online. This is particularly crucial whilst they have a limited sales team.

Local SEO IconLocal SEOA local SEO client has focused on keeping their Google My Business listing updated and has prioritised SEO work depending on trends in local search queries. One of these clients went from receiving 180 contact form enquiries in March to 580 in April!

The power of online business

As you can see, businesses across every sector have been forced to make stark choices at record-breaking speeds and whilst, at first, these choices may have been seen as temporary, it looks like they could be here to stay. From revamped websites to flexible marketing strategies, the online world is now more important than ever for businesses to achieve prolonged success – and with new avenues of revenue discovered and even new business ventures revealed, it’s time now to anticipate, innovate and adapt.

What about Echo, you ask? Well, we’ve been working remotely and adapting to the new norm. We may have even been using this time to make some changes ourselves – notice anything different? We’ll leave that up to you to find out…

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Katie Barnard at Echo Web Solutions
Katie Barnard
SEO Executive
Echo's SEO Executive who is always on the pulse of new industry trends. Katie loves analysing data and helping business owners understand the benefits of SEO - without all the jargon!

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