Lives, livelihoods, businesses, and customers have been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 3 billion people in over 130 countries are currently in lockdown with several companies asking staff to work from home.
According to FEMA, over 40% of small businesses fail following a natural disaster with one in four closing down within a year. Although governments are implementing palliatives and stimulus packages for SMBs, not all small business owners across the world can access them.
During this lockdown, it is essential to keep in touch with customers for business continuity because without your customers, you would be out of business after COVID-19. One of the ways to keep your customers engaged is via video.
In this post, we highlight how the Coronavirus pandemic is affecting businesses plus five (5) creative ways to keep in touch with your customers via video during the lockdown, but first, let’s take a look at
Table of Contents
How COVID-19 Is Affecting Businesses Sector by Sector
Travel and Tourism
UNWTO predicts that global international tourist arrivals could dip by 20%-30% leading to a loss of up to $30-$50 billion in international tourism receipts.
Risk Assets
Risk assets such as equities, commodities, and high-yield bonds have also taken a hit. As of April 9, equities like NIKKEI dipped nearly 20%, global equities like airlines dipped over 50%, currencies and commodities were not left out.
Ecommerce
Groceries, face masks, hand sanitizers, homeschooling equipment, gardening tools, gaming, and entertainment products are seeing a spike in demand.
Retail
Supermarket chains selling groceries are seeing a rise in foot traffic as consumers try to stock up.
The reverse is the case for non-grocery brick and mortar retailers, some of whom are now considering ecommerce.
Labor
This is one of the worst-hit sectors. Factory shutdowns, staff releases, and job loss are affecting millions worldwide. While many now work from home, others have been sent home from work.
Last week alone, US weekly jobless claims hit 5.2 million and a total of 22.03 million in the last four weeks, effectively erasing all gains recorded since the Great Recession.
Some of your customers work in these sectors and may have been impacted. As a business owner, you have to devise smart ideas for customer retention during times like this.
One such smart way to retain your customers is by keeping in touch via video.
Here are
Essential Facts and Statistics Showing Video Use Since COVID-19 Lockdown
Video adoption and use since the COVID-19 outbreak has grown.
- Internet hits have increased by 50%-70%
- Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ may grow by up to 12%
- Disney+ streaming service is now available in most of Europe with 50 million subscribers and counting
- Amazon, Facebook, and Youtube are lowering the quality of videos streamed in Europe to help ease the burden on broadband
- Telecom Italia recorded over 90% surge in traffic
- MainStreaming reported over 3x increase in streaming traffic
- Americans now spend over 8 hours a day on streaming services, binge-watching up to 3 shows per week
- 65% of parents now allow their children to watch more TV and videos
- 3 in 4 Americans admit to streaming more due to COVID-19 lockdown
COVID-19: 5 Creative Ways to Keep in touch With Customers Using Video
The following are five (5) creative ways brands can keep in touch with customers using video during this lockdown period.
1. Let Customers Know You’re Still Open for Business
Groceries, markets, and other essential services/businesses are open in most countries. Other businesses have embraced remote work allowing their staff to work from home. If you fall into this category, it is essential to let your customers know that you’re working from home and still open for business or to attend to customer complaints/inquiries.
Here’s an example from McDonalds.
Source: Youtube
With McDelivery, McDonald lets its customers know that they can now have their usual treats delivered to them at home during this lockdown.
Like the McDonalds example cited above, you can also create a short video highlighting which of your services are still available to customers. If you’re a subscription-based business, this can be of great help in order to reduce potential churn.
2. Create Explainer Videos About COVID-19-Related Products
People are either locked down at home or working from home. Either way, they’re spending more time at home. Amazon realizes this and is updating most of its Alexa videos to show what its customers can achieve with Alexa while home without even mentioning a word about COVID-19.
Source: YouTube
3. Inspire Hope In Your Customers That Everything Will Be Fine
Another way to communicate and keep in touch with your customers emotions and feelings is to inspire hope in times of fear and uncertainty like this. By sharing factual and inspirational video content, you can connect with your customers in a non-business sense. If they connect with your message and bond with you, it could translate into more future business.
Source: Youtube
Un Giorno Migliore is Italian for “a better day”. In this beautiful video, Coca Cola is seen reassuring it’s Italian customers that everything will be fine. This is timely considering Italy is one of the worst-hit countries.
If you have customers in hard-hit countries, you can create a custom animated video in their language, depicting popular landmarks in their country. Encourage them to stay safe. By showing genuine interest in their welfare and going the extra mile to put it in video, you could even win new customers.
4. Create Informational Videos
Effective communication is key to customer retention. Brands that know how to communicate and engage with customers gain their trust. This week, YouTube deleted videos posted by David Icke linking 5G to Coronavirus, promising to track and take down all such videos in a bid to stifle misinformation.
Speaking of misinformation, there’s a lot of it around COVID-19. Such fake news can mislead the public and can lead to unfortunate outcomes.
WHO puts things in perspective here:
Source: YouTube
If you can obtain COVID-19 related information from trusted sources like the WHO, put it into video and share it with your customers, urging them to stay safe, you will win their trust and their patronage long after Coronavirus is gone.
5. Engage on Social Media
Social media usage has spiked since the COVID-19 outbreak. People are home, socially distant, isolated and bored. To pass time and to keep in touch, many have turned to social media. Facebook reports that usage of its messaging services, voice and video calling has gone through the roofs.
Walmart nailed this as seen in the video below where its retail associates sang the popular Lean on Me:
Source: Facebook
The 12 days old, one minute long “Here for You” video already has over 8.1m views as of the time of writing.
According to Facebook, we’ve seen up to 70% more time spent across our apps… with messaging up 50% and group calls up by 1, 000%. You can leverage these to keep in touch with your customers this period, especially your high-value customers. You can share your custom animated videos or what you’re doing to stay safe on your social media handles and encourage your customers to do the same, like, share and comment.
Conclusion
You can keep in touch with your customers using video by trying any one or a combination of the five methods highlighted above. Whatever you do, remember that communication is key to customer retention and since video is known for high engagement levels, it is ideal for customer communication this period.
Let us know how you’re using video to keep in touch with your customers.
Author Bio:
Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business and Ecommerce Copywriter who also covers Tech and Social Media. When not writing, he’s thinking of writing or making music. He’s been featured in Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, Floship, GrowMap, Self Growth, among others.
You can connect with him on
Twitter: @amos_onwukwe
LinkedIn: Amos Onwukwe.
Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business and Ecommerce Copywriter who also covers Tech and Social Media. When not writing, he’s thinking of writing or making music. He’s been featured in Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, Floship, GrowMap, Self Growth, among others.
You can connect with him on
Twitter: @amos_onwukwe
LinkedIn: Amos Onwukwe.