March 17, 2020

Is Your Business Being Impacted by the Coronavirus? Here Are Some Ways Businesses Are Helping

We all know about the Coronavirus / COVID-19. It’s impossible not to. If you own a business you are either being directly or indirectly affected, but no business is immune. This pandemic has probably changed our lives forever (and that’s not all bad), but right now it’s hard. We often think of disruption as coming from other businesses and we rarely think of disruption coming from the outside, but this is disruption in the most profound way.

Disruption is hard, it causes pain, and it forces adaptation. While difficult, adaptation is ultimately always good. (If you are an ecommerce company, we discuss this more specifically here.)

That being said, it’s important for us to help each other get through this. This is a time when we should be collaborating, NOT isolating. We should avoid rash, quick decisions based in fear. This is the time to be a leader.

For us, we’ve been thinking a lot about ways that we can help other businesses in need. While we’re in no way immune to what’s happening, we believe in expansion not contraction, and our skills, products, and services are ones that help businesses adapt and sell more online through ecommerce.

Here’s what we’re doing

Metacake, if you don’t already know, is an ecommerce growth team and we produce educational resources and services for growing your ecommerce channel. We help brands of all sizes from global brands to early-stage brands create healthy business growth through ecommerce.

Starting today and for at least the next 15 days, if you are a business being affected by the disruption that the Coronavirus is causing and you want to strengthen your online ecommerce/marketing channel, we are offering the following free and heavily discounted resources (just covering our cost):

  1. We’re offering $5 off all of our educational ecommerce growth guides. We have guides on branding, ecommerce fundamentals, conversion optimization, and email. Just head to our store and use the code BEGENEROUS at checkout.
  2. Free strategy coaching sessions for businesses being directly affected by COVID-19 who believe our ecommerce and marketing expertise could help them. Just fill out a project form and note your situation in the details.

Here’s what our Partners are doing

We also decided to reach out to our amazing partners to see how they would be willing to help.

Below is a list of generous offers (some free, some heavily discounted) that marketing and ecommerce service companies are offering to businesses in need. These are products, tools, education, and services that can help any business looking to boost their online presence and ecommerce channel. We will be adding to this page over time, so check back!

Brex is the credit card for ecommerce companies. If you run paid marketing, you should really consider using Brex to fund those ads. They have a unique model where they take into account your sales and issue credit based on that. They have longer repayment periods than traditional cards and no interest or fees, which is critical in this time of uncertainty.

Bold is one of the top app developers on Shopify behind some of the most popular and useful apps.

Shopify is one of the top ecommerce platforms for most businesses looking to drive real scale through ecommerce.

  • Shopify is opening up local in-store pickup and delivery features for all businesses currently using Shopify POS for their offline retail. They’re also enabling gift card support for all plans so that local (and online) businesses can keep selling even if they’re doors are closed. There’s no action you need to take here.
  • If you aren’t signed up to Shopify, you can signup here and they’re extending free trials to 90 days. If you are retail business looking to diversify online, signup to Shopify and contact us for a free coaching session by filling out this form and referencing this post.

SaveMySales provides outsourced customer support and sales for ecommerce brands over chat and sms. They create massive returns on recovering what would be essentially lost sales from visitors that bounce from your site.

  • They are generously offering a team of live texting agents to plug into your store for 2 weeks for free. That also comes with a dedicated number. Their team will quickly learn about your brand, answer customer questions, and help those customers make purchases. Signup using this link to get access to this offer and mention this post.

Sezzle offers an easy way to extend payment plans to your customers. Making it easier for your customers to purchase right now is critical. Sezzle helps do that, at no cost to the customer.

FOMO Agency specializes in helping you understand what stuff to sell, and how much of it to buy; FOMO agency helps with: Merchandise Planning, Buying, Competitive Analysis, and more.

DCKAP has built one of the top product customization apps for ecommerce, in fact we worked with them to develop a product customizer for Old Spice.

DigitalMarketer is an online educational resource for businesses around almost every area of digital marketing.

The Apex Path provides resources and programs for growing professional services companies.

WP Engine is the best platform if you are using WordPress as your website to power your ecommerce store. They are stable, secure, and scalable.

Lastly

We encourage you to think about how you can help others with your expertise, and if you decide to do that please let us know so that we can add you to this list.

Live in faith not fear. Let’s get through this together.

Never Stop Growing!

by Ken Ott