Get prepared to put the effort in, climb to the top, and hit the road running post-pandemic

Maintain your online strategy and you'll be rewarded with significant gains that were previously difficult to achieve during normal times

Companies during the current pandemic are either steady, turning over business, or completely grinding to a halt. This is a difficult time for everyone as COVID-19 spreads, with many companies and businesses severely impacted. For most of us, the financial, physical, and mental effects of the world protecting itself is historic and poses many challenges for years to come.

The pandemic is affecting everyone and every business in some shape or form, even Google's traffic is down, regardless of the increase in online sales. Every company has a website and a marketing strategy to built awareness and growth during normal and challenging times, or at least you would think so. In this article, I want to share with you some important points about having and maintaining a robust web content marketing strategy, especially during challenging times. I want to make sure that you completely understand the effects that the pandemic is currently having on your companies’ website rankings right now, and on many wider aspects if you decide to ‘down-tool’ your web content marketing strategy. Simply put, if you take a ‘down-tools’ approach to web marketing during the pandemic, your companies website search ranking and traffic will significantly drop more than expected, and this will affect your business in many different ways, and in the months ahead, maybe years. Website gains that you have earned over the last year or so will simply be reversed, but it goes much deeper than that, companies will not only experience a significant drop in organic search rankings, website traffic, and sales enquiries, the negative analytics will result in fewer business sales in the future, and a drop in revenue - it’s that important.

Hit the ground running when the lockdown is lifted

Like any industry, and especially the oil & gas industry in which we support, you simply can’t switch your web marketing strategy on and off, through experience, that simply doesn’t work. Many companies don’t understand that it takes time to get a web content marketing strategy up and running again, and more so when it comes to climbing the Google ranking race, it takes time. As a result, many companies will not be in a position to hit the ground running when the lockdown is lifted if they ‘down-tools’ their web content marketing strategy. Interestingly, by maintaining your current website marketing strategy, whilst competitors are neglecting theirs, you can make significant online gains that were very difficult to achieve pre-pandemic, and online gains can translate to increased enquiries and business.

Smart companies understand this and work hard to make significant gains

Some companies and maybe your competitors have fallen into the downward trap of neglecting their web content marketing strategy, and social media linked website news. The ‘down-tools’ approach to marketing is a big mistake because currently the WWW and ‘Google’ are being momentarily starved of good content and company web activity, web updates, news articles, and suitably linked social media. Smart companies understand this and work hard to make significant gains, and it’s normally the larger, more astute companies that take the advantage. Their objective is to make ground on their competitors, to win consumer confidence, and business by building their profile and awareness during these times. Through fresh informative web content for everyone to see, including Google search, they make significant gains.

Unique position to close the gap

Game changers, companies that never could achieve a good website ranking position or online awareness due to larger more established competitors, are now in a unique position to close the gap, and potentially reverse the situation if their competitors ‘down-tools’. For your efforts to maintain a robust and consistent web content marketing strategy, you will see an increase in organic search rankings and website traffic, resulting in more exposure, increased enquiries, and potentially more revenue in the future. It makes sense, therefore, to keep an eye on your competitor's website to see if they have taken a ’down-tools’ approach, by analysing and monitoring their website updates and social media activity.

Forward-thinking entrepreneurs and savvy companies

It’s obvious to see online, that many companies have simply forgotten the value of fresh web content and news updates. It can be argued that everyone is currently preoccupied with the devastation that the virus has brought, and rightly so. Every day we are thinking about the lockdown, furloughing employees, life, and business after the Pandemic, the list goes on. However, that said, forward-thinking entrepreneurs and savvy companies are also thinking of how they can use the current situation to make online ‘gains’ that were previously difficult to achieve during normal times, gains that will put them ahead of the competition in the future. Hitting the ground running post-Pandemic, is imperative for these companies.

Prospects are put off, and existing clients begin to ask the question

I’m sure everyone has visited a website only to see that the website news was updated six months ago. It doesn't exactly leave you with a good impression of the company, and the ramifications can run deep psychologically. Prospects are put off, existing clients begin to ask the question, and Google drops your ranking position for another company. It all starts the downward cycle in consumer confidence and business.

Don't be confused about social media

One thing is certain, the WWW is a global place to network, to show your products and services, grow your profile and company awareness, and build growth. It's more than just a sales ground for many companies, so in terms of value, it has to be seen as a serious place to do business. That said, many companies don't invest in a website marketing strategy, they simply build a website and very rarely visit it to make updates. It's imperative that you do so, your website is a blank canvas, and needs to be enriched with relevant and informative news about your company. Partly to blame for this confusion is social media, many companies think that this has replaced web page updates, and they can simply publish posts instead, and sometimes repetitively, and with poor content. The correct way to utilise social media as part of your web marketing strategy is to make sure that your social media posts link back to your optimised website article, it's in this linking process that the hidden benefits accumulate, especially from Google. Once on your website, your prospects and clients can read your article, browse other relevant pages on your website, and to some degree, you can control the browsing behavior through other page links and prompts, they can bookmark, download, make an enquiries, etc. That's generally the key function of a web marketing strategy. Remember, never leave your prospects and customers on other social media websites, ... 'likes and comments' is only vanity, real prospects, and customers 'click' to read good content.