How Covid Transformed a Business and 4 Things You can Learn from It
I have some friends that own a high-end clothing brand. They do all the designing, manufacturing and marketing themselves. Prior to Covid they were doing very well, selling their clothing line in nine high-end brick and mortar boutique stores that they owned, up and down the west coast. Life was good!
Then Covid hit. Like many other small businesses when the pandemic started their store sales were decimated. Life wasn’t so good or fun anymore. Luckily for them, in just a few months they were able to bring their stores online and sales are doing better than ever. This was not an easy “pivot” for them to do since they are both in their early sixties. Luckily, they have a daughter who was able to help them build a Shopify store and also help them with their marketing.
Having discovered D2C marketing, they are truly enjoying themselves more than ever. They love speaking to their customers directly, with an online chat feature and just learning a whole new way to market at this point in the lives has been exciting for them.
Here are some lessons they had to learn in order to transform their business.
- Good Entrepreneurs must be flexible and willing to change
This has always been a trait of successful entrepreneurs, but the quarantines brought on by Covid have magnified the reasons for businesses to be nimble and change direction quickly.
Here are a few companies you may recognize that were able to successfully pivot. Nintendo, Twitter, Play-Doh, Flickr, Starbucks, Instagram, Airbnb, YouTube, PayPal, Slack, and Yelp. Just search on Google for any of these to find out what they did. For many businesses it was literally “change or die.” Some were able to, but a lot were not.
By changing the way they market my friends were not only able to save their business but make it thrive.
2. D2C marketing has always worked
You can call it direct marketing, direct response marketing and now direct to consumer (D2C) marketing, but it is something I have been doing for the last 30 years. I have seen it evolve from direct mail to digital eCommerce, but marketing your products directly to the end consumer has always been a great business model. So why don't more businesses do it? Bad management, lack of knowledge and resistance to or fear of change.
I have always been a big believer in letting the end consumer purchase a product where they are most comfortable, not what is easiest for the business. Now that Covid has forced this business model onto your business you should embrace the change with wide open arms (see #1 above). If you aren’t doing this type of marketing you should start. There is plenty of expertise out there to help you get started.
3. Good marketing techniques always work, regardless of the platform
As I mentioned above many established businesses (older people) are scared of technology or afraid of change. Keep this in mind, if you are running a successful business you already know many of the things necessary to be successful on different platforms.
Let me give you an example that I write about in my book, The Amazon Jungle (Morgan James Publishing). If you look at many Amazon listings, they show just plain images. What if you were to bring your retailing knowledge, things that worked for you in a brick and mortar environment to Amazon? You would make those images more exciting, include people in the images, add info-graphics, make each listing like like a magazine ad (that is something you know how to do). Guess what? These new listings will increase your sales. Same knowledge — different platform.
My friends were able to use their retailing expertise and apply it to a new platform — Shopify. They have more success than before the pandemic.
4. Paid ads always work
A paid advertising campaign that can be run as a profit center is the main element of a successful D2C business model. This has always been true. I have used direct response marketing to help build brands like The Juiceman, Sonicare, George Foreman grill, Rug Doctor and GoPro cameras. The thing they all had in common was a successful direct response paid advertising program.
What I have found is the same direct response metrics that worked for newspaper and radio ads 30 years ago, DRTV commercials 15 years ago, now work with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Amazon ads. The key is understanding how direct response works and then you can make this the cornerstone to your D2C business.
You can learn from the experience my friend’s business had to go through in order to change and still be successful. Incorporating the basic tenets of D2C marketing is a skill set that will serve you well no mater what business you are in.
