Hey guys, it's episode two of grow with RJ media. And I have Alex, he's our videographer, and we're going to talk about we're going to talk about how the Coronavirus is impacting businesses right now and what you should do about it. So what's up Alex?
Nothing Just at the office chillin. Usual everyone's there.
That's good. That's good. So, so bad this whole Coronavirus thing, what, what exactly do you think is scaring all these businesses about whether or not they should really be putting money into marketing right now, if they're scared, people aren't going to actually come visit their place of business. What do you think's really doing it? If you know if there's any any other details that you could think of that would help businesses?
Well, first off, social media is completely blowing it out of proportion. Yes, it's like a pandemic. And it's spreading quickly. But like, so it's like the flu like, yeah, it's like, just like the flu on like steroids if you're above 50 years old. But um, I think you should actually be pushing more ads on social media, since everybody's on it waiting right now, because Coronavirus is a trend. And it's
spread through social media. So everyone's paying 110% attention on Instagram, Facebook, and any good point social media platforms to get that news. So they're scrolling? Yeah, ad pops up and might just make them think about it, which is why more people on the platforms might as well try to get seen. Absolutely.
Now it's more traffic to these platforms, because you can't go anywhere. What are you gonna do? You're gonna sit in the house, you're gonna watch Netflix or, you know, TV, and you're gonna go on your phone? Get? Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, I mean, realistically, businesses really have nothing to really worry about. I mean, obviously, you need traffic in the door. But, I mean, first of all, it's gonna get to be warmer weather out.
And this is supposed to be, you know, not really killing the virus, but it's not going to spread as much. So basically, rate cuts are ignored for the category. And this is all seamless. No, no, it's good. Let it record, this is fine. This is, this is how authentic Thank you, to what it is. So um, so basically, what's going on? Is businesses really do think that like, you know, I should put a pause on marketing or let's stop all marketing because no one's coming in. That's not how
marketing works. You know, marketing is marketing. Not all that it's not supposed to have a direct sale all the time. Marketing is your brand. You know, that would be like GEICO saying, I'm not going to do any more commercials because no one's driving on the road. So I don't want to do any more commercials. No, you're still going to do that because that's your brand. There's no reason to unless your business is shutting down. You should never stop marketing. Yeah, well, like
the Coronavirus I feel is just gonna be like another trend for like another week or two and then it's gonna die out again so like, why everyone's like why traffic to all these platforms is on like an all time high.
Yeah, Rick doesn't agree it's a week but you know, but no, it's well, I want to say is have a point, though. It is a trend. It was
was it like the swine flu, right. Like that lasted for two weeks on social media and then died out? Like, why this traffic? You might as well put money into those platforms. Oh, 100% a lot more people are gonna see it. Yeah, take advantage of the attention. That's happening, right. Especially locally, like for us on Long Island. This is like, one of like, the first like, main tragic things to really hit us. Yeah. In terms of like a virus or something. Because usually, like stays on, like the
other side of the world. But like, locally, it's like, there's so much news about Coronavirus, just on Long Island, and you see a bunch of stuff on Instagram about it. So if you're a local business, might as well just throw money at some ads. And
yeah, 100% I mean, listen, at the end of the day, people stuff to eat, people still have to go places. I mean, you know, and then it turns into the whole point of, like you said, when it dies down, what do you expect to happen? If you haven't been marketing the whole time? People aren't just going to walk in your door again, because they don't know about it. They don't know about your business. If you haven't been marketing, how are you going to
get new clients? You know, if people were on Instagram and Facebook and they see your AED, you know, a lot of a lot of places have services that people don't use right away. If you're an event venue and you need to book a birthday, or you need to book a you know, an engagement party or something. People are going to book that month in advance and are going to book it and then oh yeah, I got I'm
gonna go this week. So by the time the by the time the virus is either gone or less of an issue is when these people are going to actually come visit the place and it's just really important. And actually, during this downtime, when your business is less has less traffic in it, you should take advantage of creating content for your business, right? I mean, this is the perfect time to start making videos. And you know, everyone says, I don't have enough time for that. Well,
guess what? Now you do. Now you have time, you're not as busy anymore. So take advantage of what's going on. I know, it might be tragic, but you still have a business to run. So you have to remember that.
Yeah, well, like, it's like a perfect time, just like you said, make content strategize, actually. Yep. Prepare for when for when you expect like normal,
right? Absolutely. I mean, listen, this is, you know, this too shall pass. I just like it. tragedy happens. But it's just tragedy. It's, you know, it's just like, you know, it's like Katrina, or, you know, I mean, it's not as bad as Christina for the love of God that, you know, that was just horrible and play businesses that shut down. Yeah, that that was something Sandy, Sandy was bad for us. Oh, yes. See, Sandy was bad for us. And that, and that in your right, and that one, businesses did
shut down as well. But this is this is not that this is a virus. And, you know, if you're young, and you're healthy, you're it's not, you're not going to end up, you know, in critical condition or death, you know, this is happening to a much older demographic. Yeah. So, you have to think about the fact that, you know, if he ain't going anywhere, then you have to just you have to plan like, you're still going to be back in business. That's basically
business as usual. And no one's saying you have to, you have to fully invest 100% into advertising, but just don't stop because of it. You know, you can't really pause, you know, analytics, you can't pause. Audience building. You know, you can't put that stuff because guess what, when you're going to need it, is when you're not going to have
it? Yeah. Well, I still think it's like the perfect time to like, actually plan for your business. Yeah. If you have any redesigning to do go redesign, if you have any content that you need to create, create content, figure out how you want to create it, right? Just, it's a good planning phase.
Absolutely. 100%.
That's good. That's good stuff. And then as far as video, you know, because you'd have better insight than me. What types of videos should businesses be making during this downtime? When you're not going to have customers? You might not have customers come in. So what can they do? What what can they do in this in this moment? Well,
I think the most important one is going to be being vocal to like your community of like, Hey, if you have to shut down, let the people know when you're shutting down. When you're reopening. maybe create a video on that. So then, your community can be in touch with you. So it's like if you're a local pizzeria, like, Hey, guys, we're going to be shut down for the next week. Don't try to order pizza or whatever. And then when you come back, maybe launch like a small special or something to try to
attract the people back. It's good idea. Yeah, that's an idea. Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. Businesses. Yeah, definitely.
And to, to continue on to that, you know, segue into something like that, you know, these ideas that you're gonna get, you just have to try them. You know, at the end of the day, you're not you don't know what's going to work. Especially if your business was doing much different than the last time something like this occurred, you know, when was the last time that we were in a state of emergency, or, you know, Italy's on lockdown, for Christ's sake. So it's like, a lot of this stuff is like, you
know, brand new to people. It's like, you know, I didn't have a business last time, I was working at a job last time, so I don't know what to do. You know, that's the purpose of us. Trying to help you guys out is to let you know that it's not game over. It might be sure you're gonna get some downtime, no problem, you might have to pull the reins back a little bit. But that doesn't mean that you can't like you said you can't create content doesn't mean you can't create videos, video is how
you're communicating. Just imagine you are able to have a TV commercial to communicate with your customers you still have that there's a reason why you can't create content just because there's a virus going around and people don't want to leave the house they're going to be like you said they're going to be on their mobile devices
well I think use the Send even pull back the reins, I think right now used to go even harder to do so. It's like, starting like hitting the ground running. Like why most people are gonna be like, Oh, I'm not leaving the house for the next two weeks or whatever. And they're like, Oh, I'm gonna take this as like a chill time. You could use it to be like, I found the plan. Time to
cut all my chips in Yeah, because this content I'm mean, there's tons of content for clients that they haven't shown the world, or that they showed only once. So why not, like you said, take advantage of this, if you have a rich content library, it's time to put ads out for this. Because now you can establish that audience, there's people who probably don't even know, half the content that you put out there, because you don't normally do it on a daily basis.
Now, you could start to gain that audience back, or develop a new audience based off of your content that they've never seen before.
Yeah, well, like, I think it's also a good time to like practice stuff, right? Like, you could always like, test out what you want it to do. Because right now in person, you're not gonna have a lot of customers. So it's like, again, if the three people that come in, they don't like it, you didn't affect the 50 customers, you got a day, right? It's a good testing phase. Absolutely. Seeing how it works. Yeah, definitely.
And that goes for anybody that's in your organization to, you know, there's probably, you know, you could be you could be any business right now. You know, if you're, like you said, if you're a local pizzeria, or if you're a restaurant, and you know, your staff, there's some staff members that you're like, Oh, what am I going to do? There's not too many people coming in, you know, these staff members are just wasting time. And maybe I should tell them not to come
in? No, why not give them that creative opportunity that maybe they're waiting for you to give them? What happens if, you know, Karen is sitting there, and she has all these ideas, and you never have time to do any of that. Now's the time, now's the time to branch out and see what your staff could offer you. Why not? I mean, everyone has a little piece of creativity in them, and you really don't know
what they're capable of. And now this is kind of like an opportunity, you know, from God or whoever, so that you can possibly even expand on your business, and not even realize it just by looking at the internal workings of your business, you really don't know who you have working for you until you give them that challenge. And like you said, it's a great time, a great opportunity to take advantage of this, even though it's a tragic
situation. It is a good time for businesses to kind of rethink what's going on and re strategize, you know,
most important thing to take away from it if you're a business owner, right? Or even if you just work their business, just be like, Oh, maybe my boss, right now doesn't know what to do. Maybe if you want to get a promotion or raise like, and you have time off because you know, he's not working. Yeah, yeah, maybe you could think, oh, maybe I can help him in some way. Just think of some ideas where I have time and he's stressing, like, yep.
If you're a pizza place, like, you know, oh, like, say if your boss's name's Rob, or something. Hey, Rob, I know we have like this pandemic going on. But like when we, when we reopen, we said like, have like a buy one, get one free slice or whatever, right? Just like try to get customers back in. Because if you get him money when everything settles down, and like his business could hit the ground running. Yeah. Sounds like it makes you look better. Absolutely. Just like an employee.
Yeah, it's just, you know, it's just opportunity left and right. Where a lot of people would just roll over and say, Yeah, you know what, let's shut down shop. And we see you guys in two weeks. It's like, No, you know, you can you could do stuff at home. There's a reason why I mean, even if, even if New York says, oh, yeah, you know, nobody on the road, only if you have to go to work, but you decide to close the shop, right? You could still create at home. I mean,
this is your business. You know, it's, it's your passion. So if you really want to show off how much your passion means to you, this is the perfect opportunity to show your creative side that people might not know you have until something like this happens. And you could do, you could do a bunch of stuff you could do, you could start creating a personal brand based off of the downtime as well. So you could do you know, a q&a, do go live, go live on there and say, Hey, guys, listen, in the
midst of what's going on. Why don't we have some fun? Let's have a q&a session. What are you guys, you know, is there a special? You know, is there a weekly special that you guys think we should do? You know, how about those burgers, you guys like those, get feedback from your customers be engaging, you know you that's the whole point of social media, Be social. You don't have to always be in your shop. In order for you to be social on social media. You have your personality, your personal brand
to do that. And if you don't want to do it, pay one of your workers to do it. I mean, this is like, this is the game man. This is the game when you're challenged, how you're going to shift the gears how you're going to reposition it. into a place that you can benefit. And you're also benefiting your audience. That's what social media is
about. So yeah, I think I think I've said my piece on, you know, on what's going on, you know, just because like you, you know, I see it everywhere I see stuff on like Twitter, I have, you know, we have clients, you know, asking questions, and it's going through everyone's mind is like, what should I do, I don't know what to do right now. Because I don't know, if I'm going to make that same amount, you know, I'm gonna I might make 25% of my revenue that I made last month
because of what's going on. So punchline is capitalize 100% capitalize on your marketing, don't stop marketing. If you don't want to spend the money, pull back the reins, but do not
stop marketing. It's very important, like you said, redesign something, create something, you you schedule content, you can, there's so much, there's so many free, free pieces of software out there that allow you to change up your strategy, and allows you to now post content that you wouldn't normally post on a daily basis, maybe you do a post once a week, because you don't have time. So what you can do is you can now create content for the whole fucking month and post that and
schedule it. I mean, there's, there's just so much stuff out there and you don't like I said, you don't have to be at work to do any of this. You could do all of it at home. You could use reuse old media, go on Instagram, take a screenshot and reuse old media and create stories start storytelling, then start storytelling.
That's perfect. You got
anything else to add? You think it
hit the nail on the head? All right. Well, that's, that's about it for this episode, folks.
Yeah, we're trying to help you guys grow in the digital realm. And you know, sometimes things get rough. But all you got to do is turn on the podcast, and we'll have whatever feedback we can offer you and anything you guys recommend, you could just message us through Instagram, RJ Media Studios, or one word. And even in the podcast episode below, we're going to have our handles for
everything. We're available on any channel, even text messaging, you could text us and we have a we actually have a 24 hours seven days a week, text messaging bot that will answer your questions, you can literally ask it, how do I grow my Facebook following and our RJ we call them RJ will text you back and let you know how you can grow your restaurant business or how you can grow your music business. You know, let's not go crazy. You can't
ask them. You know who's the 22nd president united states, but you can ask him marketing questions. And if he can't answer it, he's going to ask us and now the real experts are really going to we're going to give you a call and we're going to talk and we're going to help you throw it. So. All right. Till next time, folks. If you feel like this has brought you some value, please join our community by texting podcast to 516-447-5332