While it looks like the pandemic is very much in control here in Australia (at least compared with overseas), the perverse and bizarre effects that we have seen firsthand (via our clients) have been profound.
I have rounded up some information from our clients that might help to illustrate the effect that the COVID-19 outbreak has had in the hope that we can all learn from the information.
Now for many of these businesses the changes have been totally out of their control and I completely sympathise with their situation.
Lets discuss some of the winners and losers (from what we have seen with our clients):
- A home improvement retailer/wholesaler has seen their internet traffic double since March – this is at an all time high
- A home security installer has had some of their busiest months
- Internet training providers are booming, with multiple clients reporting some of their busiest periods since inception
- Initially holiday makers/caravan parks were required to shut and had little to no future bookings. This has since reversed and many are struggling to keep up with demand
- A personal trainer has had to make fundamental changes to their business and is now busier than ever
- Gyms/martial art centers/swimming training facilities have had to shut or run at a reduced capacity which makes the business essentially nonviable
- Non essential medical services (i.e. dentists) have had to significantly reduce their workload (some were legally required to shut)
In what ways can your business do better?
From what we have seen first hand, below is a list of ways business have been able to better handle the situation:
1. Communicate clearly the changes to your business
It is essential that you outline any changes/restrictions to your business including opening hours. Google my business makes it easy to post updates about your business and I would recommend coupling this with a blog post/site banner. This might seem mundane but is very important as the rules regarding COVID vary so greatly from business to business. A great example of this is Absolute Security website. You can clearly see a bold banner at the top of the website:
Also look into ways that you can shift your communication/activities to the digital space. Gsuite and Office 365 offer professional digital communication (video conferencing) for free as part of their ongoing plans. We can help set this up for you – please contact us for more information.
2. Pivot your business as required
If the restrictions make your business operations impossible, try to think outside of the box about how you can continue providing value for your clients. A perfect example of this is one of our personal training clients who use to offer group classes. These are now very restricted so they pivoted to providing 1 on 1 instructions at their house, working longer days in order to effectively service the same number of clients. Things have been difficult for them but they have managed to retain nearly all of their clients (and gain some more).
Note: for some people this may still prove impossible or nonviable, in this case perhaps you are best to temporarily close business operations but develop your online presence by providing value through blog posts/videos. The most important thing is to keep your business going and not give up.
3. Trim expenses
This should be a no brainer – use this time to examine your business’ expenses and work out what you can trim/remove. This might require seeking some expert advice. Some real gains can be made with your IT fees for Software as a Service (SaaS) products. For example we would suggest looking at all of your users in Gsuite/o365 – can some of these accounts be consolidated or removed? For one of our clients we were able to remove 4 users accounts saving them close to $60 per month ($720 per year) in ongoing fees.
4. Help others
If you are fortunate enough to be ok during these troubling times, think about ways that you can support others in the community. One of our family friends has been giving out hampers to people effected by the crisis. This goodwill will not be forgotten in future!
Can you help?
Have you got a tip you can provide? We would love to include your advice in this blog post – so please feel free to contact us. or leave a comment below.
Hi Rhys,
Our experience with COVID has been pretty negative as the stores we wholesale our jewellery to have mostly had to close until recently. I don’t know if many of them will survive the months of slow trade. It’s not like retail was doing well even before the virus. But I do have to try and keep my business going and I believe I must use the internet more to communicate with the shops I still have. It has become impossible for our reps to see many shops and I think it will be quite a while before it is profitable for sales agents to be on the road. So I think it is up to me to do more to showcase my wares direct from the office here. This will involve sending more pictures and messages to my customers. I hope it works. Thanks, Don
Im sorry to hear that it looks like you are unfortunately in one of the worst hit sectors. Thank you for your input and best of luck to you Don.
Hi Rhys,
Our business got effected by a massive downturn of about 95% as our core work is Airport and Wedding Transfers as well as taking people to concerts or dinners.
The only thing we could do was to bunker down and wait. We managed to trim some expenses like reducing advertising cost as we did not need to spend as much + got some better deals on insurance and such.
We are quite lucky that we do not have any business loans so whatever little help we could get from Government keeps us going and cover our expenses at least.
We had a chance to look at some new strategy where we can expend but we will have to see how that works once the borders are open and restrictions are lifted.
We started to see some movement in inquiries but it is going to take a while i reckon.
Wow that is really significant reduction in your business – I really feel for you. Thank you for posting your experiences and all the best. I will also send you a private message about possibly reducing some of your web expenses by moving away from wix.
Hi Rhys
We have really used any downtime to our advantage with looking at all of our processes and procedures in detail with the luxury of time on our side. We are ready to grow and be be ready for more “Great” clients in the future.
That’s great to hear – we have been doing similar. You raise a good point which I will mention when I revise the article.
Hey Rhys!
Our business has been in the fortunate position to operate in an industry (construction/home improvement) that has remained busy during COVID-19. At the beginning of restrictions the phones did stop ringing, we were in shock and we were running our business from a place of fear. What was going to happen to our business? How long could we keep our staff if work stopped? What were our minimum operating costs? Could we still rely on our supply chain?
Work started to pick up and fear soon changed to hope. Hope is always better than fear. We changed our mindset to see the challenges we faced as possible opportunities.
There have a been a few key learnings for us over the past few months:
1. Knowledge is power. Know your numbers.
We were able to make better decisions about our business once we knew exactly what our minimum operating expenses were and how much work we needed to cover that cost. What was our break even point and at what point would we need to make those difficult decisions to ensure the survival of our business. Now that we know our minimum operating costs we are working towards having enough cash reserves to cover our business expenses for a minimum of 3 months.
2. Is their a hidden opportunity?
I love reading stories about how businesses pivoted and changed, not just to survive but to flourish. Like Stage Kings whose industry completely stopped overnight, have started building flat pack home office furniture.
Many of our competitors started consolidating, reducing their advertising budgets and downsizing their teams. While they were bunkering down we turned up and saw this as an opportunity to position ourselves as a leader in our industry. Maintaining our investment in SEO and advertising has been a crucial part of not only maintaining but increasing quality lead generation.
3. Not failures but opportunities for improvement.
We could never have expected or been prepared for how COVID-19 has affected our business and every other business in Australia. What is has highlighted to us is what worked well in our business and what didn’t. And it’s working on the areas that didn’t work well that will strengthen our business and ensure our future success.
Thank you for those great insights Rebecca – very helpful!
Hi Rhys, this are some great helpful tips for businesses looking to see what they can do during this time. We’ve been rather fortunate in the impact of COVID-19 and have continued to be able to assist our customers along the way along with helping some pivot in order to stay operational or provide additional content to make their audience aware of what is happening in the business.
Interesting times but important to keep the communication open so customers know what is happening.
Cheers,
Nat