In the midst of #COVID pandemic on our world we find ourselves in a tough situation of choosing between strapping on and wait, or trying something else we haven't done yet.
Selling online used to be the last resort for marketers of daily goods.
Not so long ago, in order to build a strong brand, when a big marketing budget is not available, owners would aim to enter the best shops first, let every other chains buyers drool over the product for a while and then let the other chains have it as well.
After 6 months or more, the selected shops would attract other shops and slowly but surely the market will spread the brand to the outskirts and beyond, letting the owners enjoy great sales and brand awareness.
Another year will pass before the prices will be lowered due to special sales and other means of pushing the revenue to grow. Well after that, the brand could be found in discount shops and the internet- the wild wild west.
From there the control over the brand would be weak since parallel products would enter the country and price wars will cause fluctuation and so a great mess will follow, unless a strong, local partner would uphold the stock when needed, and keep the sellers on a tight leash, which would help but not solve all issues.
Going forward to a few years ago, the Internet became OK to start with. A few of the major brands were born on the web and so the idea that going online would ruin a brand name replaced with the notion that it can also build you, perhaps even better then physical shops can, surely in a more cost effective way. Few big players enter the market, one of them is Amazon- a Hugh company that put the customer first and hold the sellers by their ear.
These days a brand can grow on Amazon and from there expend to the brick and mortar locations. How? with careful planning, accurate work, few contacts and some luck.
Last year we got an even bigger surprise in the form of an unseen virus that push the world into a wide spread panic, but more important- keep the physical shops without any customers. We do not know what will happen in the next few months and perhaps years, but we do know that customers still want and need to shop, so the best source of products became the online sales, and in the middle of them- Amazon.
So investing now some time in learning the ways to utilise Amazon and other online sales routes in order to build your brand might be the right next step for you and your business.
And no matter what will happen next, you will be able to profit from your time well spent online, by learning as well as by selling and strengthening your revenue.
You can never know, it might just be the thing that will save your business from going under, or perhaps, if the product is right, your work is correct and the time just fit, it might be a successful venture that will make you rethink your business doing ways.
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