2 areas eCommerce businesses should be focusing on going into 2021.

Hi, I’m Jesse. I’m the managing director of Ooze Studios. And I want to explain to you why every single business, no matter what size or industry you’re from, can successfully beat this downturn of a pandemic. It’s affected all of us, but it doesn’t have to mean that some of us are in survival mode, it means that we can actually go into a thriving mode.

And I’m explaining to you why in a minute. First of all, I want you to read, but when you have an opportunity a Harvard business review link that I put below. Really interesting analysis that they did of 4,800 companies during the great depression back in 1929. What was really interesting is that whilst 17% of those 4,800 companies that were analyzed, failed, or did very badly, 10% thrived.

And so what they did is that they did a cross-analysis and looked at common characteristics between the ones that survived and the characteristics that weren’t, they for ones that didn’t survive or that did very badly, so what where they, the third one was really interesting. The third one was the investment in technology.

A very easy thing to say, but if you invest in technology, it means that you’re driving innovation. You’re driving innovation that means that you can pivot, if you have the opportunity to pivot, that is how you survive and eventually thrive. So, what does pivoting means? It means choosing a new medium in which to communicate with your clients.

It is a new service mix. It is a brand new set of features. It is sometimes completely deconstructing and reconstructing to be able to adapt to the current climate.  Now the other thing that it doesn’t actually mention, which we strongly believe that we use is the other critical factor is having a thriving community.

Every single business, no matter whether you’re an entertainment business, a DJ, landscape architect, professional service, age care facility, whatever it is, you need to have a thriving community. Now, what does that mean? It means that when you pivot at any point such as now, such as because of an unknown event such as a wild pandemic, that by pivoting, you know that your thriving community will follow you.

You know that they will be one of the first people to purchase or to continue using your service. This is applicable across the whole board. Now, a thriving community doesn’t mean I’m having 10,000 Facebook followers. A thriving community comes from one to one communication that this end client, this end customer has a direct relationship with your brand and someone within the business or multiple people within the business.

Now, the most common way to do this is to have a good thriving email list, an email database, CRM, whatever you want to call it. Now the quantity doesn’t matter. It comes from the quality of the relationship with your community at a macro level, and a micro level, with each and every one of those people within the community.

To summarise, fundamentally, you need to be able to pivot in drastic situations such as COVID-19 so that can mean solely just focusing on doing deliveries or it can mean moving from an offline to an online platform. It can mean changing your communication channels from text through to phone calls or phone calls through to a close Facebook group, closed Facebook groups, through email marketing, whatever it is.

You need to be able to be on the ground and know what your customers want because their habits have just changed, which means that you need to change with that and need a pivot. I actually highly recommend Superfans by Pat Flynn. This is not the best-written book in the world, but it’s very personal to Pat.

And he talks about his decade-plus long search and community building skills and tips. It gradually takes you on this journey of how to start from essentially a non-connected community through to our thriving superfan community. When they will follow you and they will promote for you. And this applies to every single business, no matter what industry.

If you have a loyal following, if you have a loyal community base, a thriving community base, they will purchase your new pivot service offering, purchase your new pivoted platform, whatever that might be. So let’s say, ask me any questions, about this. I’m here to help basically.

Click here to read the full Harvard Business Review article.