How to Survive the Covid-19 Pandemic and Grow your Small Business

For over six months, the global economy has been on lockdown with billions of people forced to stay at home.

As the economy opens up gradually, a lot of small business owners are on panic mode.

Many small business owners are confused on what next to do just as many others are contemplating closing down their businesses.

As a small business owner, I share this sentiment. And over time, I’ve realized that the first thing you want to do in a crisis is not to take a hasty decision about your business.

Before taking whatever decision you want to make as regards the future of your business, you want to take into consideration, certain factors that should shape these decisions.

At different point during the peak of the pandemic, I have written certain posts that will help you stir your business through these periods.

These posts and strategies are not just time tested, they have been used by other successful businesses in times of crisis and i’ve personally used some of them to grow my business.

Now, as we continue to further navigate ways towards surviving the pandemic and growing your small business, I am sharing with you 7 key strategies you can use to survive the pandemic and grow your business.

How to survive the Covid-19 Pandemic

The following are the 7 key strategies that will help you survive the pandemic and Grow your small business.

These strategies are not just practical, they are working for most small business dealing with the post Covid-19 crisis.

For you to get the most out of it, instead of taking everything exactly as it is, you should work on fine tuning the template and adapting the it to fit in with your business.

Take Responsibility.

As a small business going through a period of crisis, it is true you didn’t plan for this neither did you forsee such massive disruption to the global economy.

Indeed things would have been different if you had some premonitions or whatever. But honestly, at this stage of the crisis, you’ll agree with me that no excuse is really going to change the effect of what has happened.

So, notwithstanding that the crisis is obviously not your fault, the first thing you need to understand is the reality that you’re still the President and CEO of your business and the buck stops on your table.

You hold the best position to take actions that will either make or mar your business and whatever decision you take right now can do either of this.

Having this understanding will get you poised to take decisions that will shape your business.

Innovate.

After taking full responsibility for your business, the next thing you want to do is to innovate possible solutions that can help you survive and grow your business.

Now, a lot of entrepreneurs are of the opinion that the Covid-19 crisis is a period to focus on survival over growth.

As a matter of fact, survival is still growth although in most cases, growth is usually very marginal during a period of survival.

A better way to say it is that instead of focusing on pursuing the same growth projections you had for your business prior to the pandemic, you should focus on revising your projections to fit in with the current reality.

What this means is that you’ll have to innovate strategies that will help you maintain a healthy profit margin, focused on helping your business survive this period.

With this in mind, instead of making business decisions that is targeted at profitability alone, you’ll also take decisions that will attract clients, and keep the turnover at a decent level that will get your business moving.

As a small business, such projections should get you to recalibrate and assess the value they or services you offer to your clients.

Change your Marketing Strategy.

It’s possible you’re still running your small business with the pre-Covid-19 marketing strategy you used for the business.

As a matter of fact, the pandemic have brought so many changes and disruption to businesses. So there’s need for a review of your marketing strategy.

Before you work on reviewing your strategy, you want to ask yourself; is my current marketing strategy delivering the result that will help my business survive during and after the Covid-19 pandemic?

This is one question you need to answer effectively to be able to either continue, overhaul or use a different strategy.

Where your answer is on the positive, you can go ahead to edit the strategy if necessary and then take on ways to make it serve you better.

If it goes on the negative, you can work on overhauling your marketing strategy completely. And then evolving a new strategy that will fit in with the current market reality.

Re-assess your priority.

The changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has definitely affected your priorities as a business.

For instance, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, as a business your priority would have been to make your best possible profits and get your business to your highest possible projections.

Now the reality is different. The lockdown has affected series of small businesses and most of the effect is largely negative.

To face this new reality, instead of working with your former projections, your most important priority right now is to survive and thrive.

With this in mind, you have to find out ways to do this effectively then make strategic business decisions that will focus on this new reality.

Stay out of Debt.

As much as possible, with the crisis abating, a lot of small business owners will be tempted to take up loans and facilities that will help them stay in business.

On a good day, this is not a bad strategy. But, with an economy that’s still largely unpredictable, you don’t want to get your small business messed up in debts.

Again as much as possible, you should see borrowing as your very last option.

Instead of seeing it as the first, re-prioritize and work as hard as possible to stay lean. Also where possible, find viable alternatives to borrowing.

Collaborate.

In times past, collaborations have helped small businesses to team up with synergies that will help them drive their goals at very minimized costs.

In a post Covid-19 era where businesses will lay of most staff to cut expenditure, you can work on collaborating with others to provide win-win solutions for your clients.

Your collaboration might demand keeping some staff on a “per-need” basis, working with freelancers or teaming up with other businesses to execute a project.

However you choose to collaborate, be more focused on creating solutions that will cut cost while providing a decent profit for all parties involved.

Embrace viable Alternatives.

In most cases, there are usually alternatives that could work in helping you cut cost effectively.

These alternatives could be things like automating your business, getting a website to serve as online offices, running a completely virtual business etc.

Although most of these alternative measures are things you may not be conversant with. And looking from the outside, you might think that using them can disrupt your business.

To make things easier for you, Instead of focusing on using all available alternatives you should work on using the most feasible ones. Or the alternatives that will help you drive the best possible outcomes.

Don’t look back.

Unless you want to appreciate how far you’ve come.

At certain intervals, you’ll be tempted to look back. There will be times that things will look worse and nothing positive is happening.

In times like this, as much as possible try to keep looking ahead at your own big picture and the possibilities before you.

And do not ever forget that with resilience, foresight and your own effort we can all come out of this stronger.

Got strategies that’s helped your business in this era? Let’s hear you.