Business Actions to show your support during COVID-19

Support Businesses

Many small businesses are having a hard time, some had to shut down or reduce their activities, others observe their income dropping as the world consumption is slowing down. Some of those businesses might be suppliers of yours or located in your neighborhood, communicate to know how they have adapted to the circumstances and if you see there is a way of supporting them, just go for it! Let me give you an example, your local restaurant shut down but still offers a takeaway service, order from them for your family, or to be delivered to NHS staff.

Here is an example of a food company that received an order from regular customers to be delivered to the NHS staff.

Online support

As we have already mentioned it in our previous article about the lockdown, people are more connected than ever, taking time to support business on social media by interacting with their content (follow, like, comment, share…) is free support you can bring them that can increase their visibility and so help them drive more sales.

Do not underestimate the power of online communication, remember that there are more social media users today than there were people on the planet in 1971!

NHS support

Support our care heroes that need help more than ever, this pandemic highlighted some failures in the public health system, NHS heroes need more materials to take care of the infected population. Bring your support and expertise by doing something that is relevant to your business, as an example if you are in the food industry you could bring them food; if you are in the fashion industry you may create masks or protections; if you are in the alcohol industry why not producing antibacterial gel... there is always a way to adapt your actions in order for your business to bring its support during this crisis.

Find here a few examples of brand and businesses that took actions to support NHS:

Leon Restaurants raised money to provide food to the NHS staff, also, Brew dog created antibacterial gels and has so far delivered 200,000 bottles to NHS hospitals and health care charities, Brompton Bicycles rallied by providing NHS with bikes so they can avoid public transports, even Liverpool FC show their support in their own way.

Support your audience

During this particular situation, you must adapt the online communication of your business to bring support to your audience, while in lockdown, they need and are looking for diverse types of entertainment. Be creative and adjust your services to answer this situation and keep a close relationship with your audience. Find a way to be present for your community, offering them a moment to escape it could be by providing online yoga classes, workout videos, cooking lessons. Educate them by suggesting an activity that will bring them any kind of value, keeping in mind that it must be relevant to the niche of your brand and to the products or services you are supplying.

Let me share with you a few examples of businesses that adapted their communication and actions to COVID-19 to bring their support to others :

Lego is offering a challenge to entertain kids, pure gym that had to close their doors is offering an online workout program for all the members and their followers so you can still workout with them from your living room.

Google created the "Learn@home" program in partnership with many creators, so you can find many topics to educate yourself from your sofa and for free while Deliveroo challenged is community to recreate the the atmosphere of a restaurant at home.

Made used is decoration expertise to inspire its community working from home to redesign their space so they can work in the best conditions and Nike is sharing a positive message, encouraging its audience to be a team player by staying at home.

The application calm introduced Instagram lives and a few articles and free programs on their app to help its anxious community find the peace during this uncertain time, whereas Lululemon is offering a weekly planning to their followers with workout, yoga, inspiration, self-care routine... A great way to be present for your audience.

And let's end these examples with Guinness, sharing greedy recipes using their products! What was the example you like the most? How did you adapt your communication to the Covid-19? Is it a challenge for you to create content during this unexpected situation? If you need advice on how you could adapt your online strategy to answer in the best possible way to Covid-19 crisis, do not hesitate to send us an email or to contact us via our social media accounts, at HBLC our response is to help business owners like you go through this rough time to be ready when the situation is back to normal.