No one is unaffected by the impact of the COVID-19 slowdown/shutdown. We are all in this together to make it through financially, physically and emotionally. Small businesses are hit particularly hard. With small businesses accounting for employing over 48% of all workers, the shutdown has the bigger impact on this group. 

The following are ways for small businesses to help weather the crisis as well as ways that consumers can pitch in and help

What businesses can do to keep sales flowing and revenue generating

Offer online sales through your website, Facebook Store and Instagram Store. If you have one or more social media profiles, start posting.  Take photos of products, videos of the store or update posts and get your information out there and let your customers know you are still active and how they can purchase from you.

Offering gift cards allow your customers to support your business by providing much needed cash now and continued support for the future. 

If you have the ability to use a video conferencing software, do so.  You can connect and sell to customers via webcam and ship directly to their home.

What Consumers can do

Buy now to use later or better yet, buy a gift card to give as a gift to a person who is working extra hard during this time, such as a health care worker, grocery store clerk or is in emergency services 

Call your favorite stores to see if they are taking phone orders or purchase online to support your favorite business.  This will help them and you get cool new stuff.

Many restaurants are now offering deliveries or pick ups.  Call your favorite restaurant to see what your options are or order from them online

People are still working, so tipping extra will not only help them financially but also boost their morale.  They are working extra hard and this will show your appreciation to them.

Do you have a social media account?  Reblog, retweet, or send out props to your favorite stores to give them a boost.  Liking, commenting and reblogging will help get them noticed.

Consider this as a donation at this time.  It will help the business during a time of little to no income.  You can help them out by not rushing to cancel and keep it open so it will be ready as soon as you’re able to go back.

Donate what you can to local food banks and pantries to help your neighborhood. Give as much as you can to help those that have little to nothing.

Call your favorite store to see if there is anything you can do to help.  There are some small businesses that have crowdsourcing where you can directly donate to help them and their employees.  It never hurts to ask how you can help.

During this trying time, let’s take the time to help out our neighbors and local businesses.  A little extra care now will help with recovery once we are back to our everyday lives.

Brick and mortar or physical stores are still the way to get start a small business for a lot of communities across the country. A lot of these business have ambitious plans to build their store and expand it beyond their first location. However seldom think about how to get beyond brick and mortar. Today’s digital world require you to go beyond your instore strategies. This post outlines some quick ways you can adopt beyond brick and mortar

Online Store

This is the quick way you can expand your channel. The easiest way is to start an online store and have start selling there . Modern retail software allows you to start online store with a few clicks without any server cost of huge maintenance. You can either use your existing site or provision a new website to do this.

Pro Tip : Use a smaller web address even if you have a long business name . This is way to remember

Buy Online Pick up in store ( BOPIS )

Online store these days are not just for online shipments. You can have Buy online and pickup instore strategies without any additional cost. These are sometimes very useful for busy shoppers where they can get orders picked up same day. BOPIS also offers Pay online or Pay in store capabilities.

Sell Products in Social media platform for Commerce

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchats have become an essential part of people’s life. They also offer ways you can sell products. When you take a nice picture of your products, get your likes and if you can have your customers buy directly from that picture it would be awesome. This is what these social platform enables with commerce.

According to hootsuite here are some statistics about  Instagram . If your business targets any of these demographics you know that it is right time to get into the Instagram commerce

Online Marketplaces

How can you sell beyond your store, online store social media ?. The answer is market places. Everyone knows that amazon is the biggest online seller of eCommerce products.  Did you know that you can also sell through amazon marketplace. Moreover did you know that you can have the products displayed across all the channels and have a single inventory view.

retailcloud online provides capability to give your instore into another dimension with  and set of channels with a single Inventory view. You can sell products in store, online, facebook , instagram and marketplaces through retailcloud online.

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