There are many ways small businesses can engage customers during lockdowns. Read about the challenges faced by Wagga Wagga business The Curious Rabbit and how they got creative and adapted. What we have done at The Curious Rabbit to engage customers during lockdown The Curious Rabbit is a cafe, bar, art gallery and bookshop. We are also home to a huge range...
Do you have a clear idea of your small business priorities for 2021? Or did you have an idea that then dramatically changed with the situation. There was so much turmoil last year. We went through significant change personally and professionally. As the uncertainty continues it can be difficult to know where to focus our time and effort in our...
Are you missing your casual acquaintances? It’s not just in the movies (think Legally Blonde, Coming to America) that people get social support from their hairdresser! Pre-COVID many of us who live in cities and large country towns would interact with somewhere between 5 and 16 casual acquaintances every day when were out and about. (As someone who lives on a...
You don't need to wait for 2020 to end – you can start 2021 now. If you find yourself saying, ‘I can’t wait for everything to go back to normal’, then stop. We have a new normal, an unknown future and an ever changing world. If you look up the definition of normal it reads: 'conforming to a standard; usual, typical,...
We have been thinking a lot about how to approach Beyond Business Groups during COVID-19. How do we approach marketing the program in such a difficult time? How do we pivot an idea based on the benefits of face-to-face learning? Nichole and I set up Beyond Business Groups because we appreciated the value of getting together and thrashing out challenges faced...
When making significant changes to your business (or if you’ve never done it before!), reviewing your customer touchpoints and customer experience is a must. Many of our Beyond Business Group members have adapted to new ways of working and delivering their products and services during COVID. To help them, and all of you, to maintain brand equity, I developed this...
During these challenging times people may be behaving differently or more erratically. Panic, uncertainty and frustration can impact on the way a person interacts with another. Which means it is likely we will be dealing with difficult customers. We can manage our customer interactions more effectively by putting ourselves in our customers shoes and using techniques to diminish or avoid...
It can be impossible to see the silver lining of COVID when we are in the thick of the pandemic, but as humans we have overcome greater adversities, and as entrepreneurs we are used to facing challenges. We are all dealing with the force of this pandemic both at a personal level, through our families and friends, as well as...
Most of the time, change sneaks up on us. It happens over time and sometimes without us being aware of it. Like the seasons. Sometimes we wrestle with change or ignore it, put it off until another day. And then one day we pop our head up and suddenly everything is different. We are in exceptional times, everything we thought we...
It is difficult to know how to handle your small business branding and promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is certainly room for your reputation to be enhanced or tarnished. Even if you have a strong understanding of your target market, the current situation impacts each individual so differently. The attitudes, feelings and responses of people vary, and are constantly...