Last week, Lorraine wrote about the importance in investing in business recovery. That raises the question, what should you invest in first? We asked a number of marketing and business professionals what they thought was most important.

As we looked at the replies several themes emerged; process, people and customers. Here’s a summary of what our we heard.

Invest!

Mark VanderWal – Bridge IT Support

Although the natural tendency for most is to pull back on expenses to protect the bottom line of your P&L, be careful where you are cutting. Marketing tends to be high on the list for reduction, but resist the temptation!  Your competitors are doing this, so you must discipline yourself to go against the grain, and invest in marketing NOW, while the door has been opened.

Invest in Your Processes

Josh Ryther – Deksia

Improve and re-evaluate your process and it will improve your product and help decrease stress in your talented team. The unknown puts undue stress on your team and hinders them from focus and attention to the daily detail of their work. If the process is smooth and all parties have been heard and contributed to the process it will enable great work.

Sam Von Tobel – Roundpeg

Customers are going to return with pent up desire to do business. Make sure when they do, all of the questions and concerns they are going to have are addressed. Unify your messages across the board from your sales team, your website, and your social media. Make sure you have supporting content and sales tools primed and ready, which means taking a look at your current email marketing, blogs, downloadable resources, and social media assets.

Invest in Your People

Robby Slaughter – Accelawork

It will probably depend on the business, but training is a good choice, especially sales training.

Melanie Allen – Green Loop Marketing

We’re doubling down on investing in our team. We started to provide an annual education stipend so each team member can learn, grow, and explore new and exciting areas of this ever-changing industry.

Lauren Milligan – Deksia

Businesses need to be coaching their current team and/or investing in new team members to help keep their competitive edge when everything comes back online. In some industries, like food and beverage, there is going to be a HUGE demand for events, staffing, etc. Having pipelines for talent will be crucial for a company’s ability to fulfill contracts.

Randy Clark – Randy Clark Leadership

It depends on the business but education and software to advance the growth of work from home. And not only best practices for working from home, but also how to manage WFH team members.

Invest in Your Customers

Adam Bird – Deksia

Get in front of your existing and prior customers, and remind them of their excellent decision to work with you. With all of the turbulence of the last year, many customers might have forgotten what a good job you do, how great your product is, and why they need to work with you as we all find a new normal. Getting back in touch with them is a great way to restart doing business again with the people who already know and like what you do.

Brandon Coppernoll

Get customer feedback. Find out how they may have changed with the pandemic. Was there a shift? What does your ideal customer look like moving forward? What do they need most from you?

Finally, Invest in Marketing

Carol Stephen – yoursocialmediaworks.com

I’m already seeing an uptick in people wanting to invest in social media. Letting people know you’re ready to do business is critical as the economy opens back up. Updating websites with business hours, etc. is also important.

Lorraine Ball – More than a Few Words

I think the first thing business owners need to invest in is a web update, not just because we do that kind of work at Roundpeg.  Your website is the core of your marketing so when you make updates there, you have content you can use throughout your marketing

Stephanie Daily – Send a Friend Lasagna

Fine-tuning your website to ensure ease of use. If a customer gets frustrated with your website you’ll loose them.

Lucas Tetrault – Creative by Lucas

Storytelling. If your a small business owner, invest the time in telling your story of 2020 & what you plan on doing moving forward into 2021 etc. Small biz was hit hard, what got you through and what are you doing to move you beyond? Customers connect to relatable stories.

Douglas Karr – DK New Media

If they’re a local business, working hard via Google business and their email and mobile lists to get the word out that a) they’re open for business and b) precautions they’re taking with COVID19 since there’s still great concern out there.

With the economy rebounding, it is time to get back on the horse. As has been the case with every economic downturn and recession in the past, this is the clearest path out of it and back to normal. Whether it is your processes, people, marketing, or customers, now is the best time to invest in your business and help you stand out among your competition once customers come knocking once again.