Expanding small and medium business
online during COVID-19.

Attention is modern-day currency. Without it, you'll struggle to survive. Design open ups valuable opportunities for your businesses. Its importance is usually underestimated, but good design can bring some significant business benefits.

Design can you turn your ideas into innovative and competitive products and services that are suitable for your market. You can also use design to make your business process more effective and strengthen your marketing approach. Because design does not happen in a vacuum. Its respond to the condition and problems, when the world changes significantly, then the design will also adapt and change accordingly.


What as a Businessman or an entrepreneur you can do to manage through the crisis?

‍The situation is particularly ominous for small and medium scale business, which seems to be bearing the brunt of the impact. Unlike large cooperations, small businesses depend on the regular cash inflow and have limited to no cash reserves to survive a long lockdown and suspension of work.

A recent survey estimated that around 47 percent of Indian startups and small businesses have less than one month of cash left, and 27 percent are already out of funds. Many others are looking for strategic and transformational changes in their business approach to stay relevant and survive the slump.

The Covid-19 has already shown us what an enormous impact it has on the consumer’s behaviour. Lockdown made a radical shift in demand for certain products and services. And the undersupplied distribution channels and supply chain difficulties for certain companies have disrupted consumer’s purchasing behaviour. Humans are cognitive misers, meaning that we use mental shortcuts to guide our judgments and decisions.
‍
In terms of purchasing behaviour, once a routine in a certain store or preference for a particular brand is established, it becomes habitual and is difficult to change. In normal times, gaining consumer's attention and moving the needle on key consumer-behaviour metrics was a costly endeavour and often beyond the budgets and marketing capabilities of many small and mid-tier brands.


But the current environment offers an unprecedented opportunity for these smaller companies to compete against their more established rivals for exposure, mindshare, product trials, and market share with a new and broader base of potential customers. So if you think about it, you have the power to convert this crisis into a business opportunity.

‍
‍
So how your business can take benefit from this crisis?

To convert this unprecedented pandemic into a Business opportunity. We have to begin from finding what percentage of consumer purchases are vulnerable to the substitution you can provide and the ways your Business can rethink your value proportions to customers in these uncertain times. Make use of your findings and develop new ways of offering your services.
‍
Changes in consumer behaviour that we have seen in past few months include the shift in the reduction of shopping frequency but increase in average basket size, the composition of the product purchase mainly include emergency preparedness supplies, health care products, and cleaning items, increased readiness to try direct-to-consumer offerings or to shop online at stores that offer home delivery. How we live and work, spend, save, and play is getting a rethink.

The world that has tasted remote work at scale, is not going back to cubicles easily. A world where we know we need much less to live and a lot more care will start investing in health, immunity, family time, and learning. Core minimalism may also see a rise as we realise how little we need and how much we waste our resources in times of peace.

The biggest learning of the pandemic is that your local communities matter. Connected together has never been spelled out bigger and valuing communities, investing in them and first principles of interconnectedness will play out more prominently. For your business to respond appropriately, you will have to take all this into consideration.
‍
In the past couple of decades, we’ve seen this fascinating paradigm shift in the way people shop. Companies like eBay and Amazon made it easy and normal to buy things online before you could even physically see them. This unlocked unprecedented doors for thousands of small businesses and retailers around the world. Doesn’t matter what you sell, if it is a general store, a jewellery shop, an electrician services or you sell brick and mortar. Instead of being limited by your locations, any business could now market and sell to almost any country in the world.
‍
Recent events have made it more important than ever for small businesses to transition from a physical storefront to a virtual one. But as it becomes easier to sell online, it’s also become more competitive. This makes marketing and branding more important than ever.

For example, you own a Jewellery retail that has been folded up due to lowdown. What your strategy should be for the long run? As even if lockdown is lifted soon, with customers expected to shop only for essential goods. Now that you have started to analyse the market trends and taking notes of the recurring shifts in customer behaviour patterns, you will realise that certain skills and services may be more beneficial to provide than others. You might have realised that selling a necklace in your shop has become an unviable business amid muted sales. So you think of ways to bring awareness to your small business and simultaneously create new streams of revenue. If you haven’t already moved your store online, now’s the time. If you’re on a tight budget and not ready to dive straight into the online market place, creating content is your best bet. Starting a YouTube channel or an Instagram page for your business is one of the best things you can do in terms of content marketing.

Create content explaining your process of making jewellery, share behind the scenes of your workshop. You can also share the expertise you have gained in your time of business regarding Jewelleries, you can host a webinar or a live stream teaching people about gold or diamonds. So when this all will be over your audience will convert into potential customers who now acknowledge your area of expertise. There are endless opportunities and the sky is limit. If you’re out of ideas or looking for inspiration feel free to contact us. We are always keen on meeting new peoples.

‍
For small businesses and entrepreneurs, the time to act is now. You have a golden moment to gain attention, convince new customers of your value, and turn nascent purchasing patterns for your business into sustained post crisis buying behaviour. By being innovative and taking new approaches to the four fundamental dimensions of marketing, many small and mid tier Businesses will find themselves in a stronger position to compete and win against their larger rivals after the pandemic abates.