This is the key to growth and sustainability in a continually growing competitive space
Online retail is an industry that has grown immensely within the past decade from small brick-and-mortar businesses expanding their client base with the help of the internet, to entire brands that have sculpted their brand image and cultivated loyal clients exclusively online. The accessibility of e-commerce has subsequently been a catalyst for a tremendous rise in entrepreneurship and a large portion of these motivated individuals often set their sights on some form of online retail as their goal. For the online retailers that manage to succeed in establishing their operations and achieve steady growth, they in turn earn the obligation of remaining competitive, relevant, and stable beyond the means and constraints of traditional and online marketing.
Currently, as online retailers hit plateaus in their company’s growth, organizations must formulate dynamic and unique strategies that depart from the traditional e-commerce roadmap. “Doing okay” may be enough for a constricted period of time however if brands seek steady growth, then they need to increase their resourcefulness and learn to adapt to the vying tier of the market they arrived at in their journey thus far.
The conventional road map
The typical road map for online retail and e-commerce businesses begins with the launch. At this checkpoint, the business has been taken off the drawing board and is now fully viewable by prospective customers and clients. Naturally, this phase involves intense marketing which can oftentimes become the main task of the entire operation for several months and even up to a year in some cases. This large focus on marketing is invariably the direct driver of a store’s early success.
Following this period, the brand will have familiarized itself with its client base and it will then shift gears from the previous marketing-heavy approach to a more analytical approach. In this approach, everything from failing products to operational costs post-launch will be considered. The goal of this approach is to keep the structure of the operation healthy and to ensure that it’s performing well in key areas. With the right balance of intensive marketing and structural analytics, an e-commerce brand can maintain growth well beyond launch. It will, however, arrive at a level where growth has slowed regardless of the store’s options being exhausted
At this stage in an online store’s lifetime, growth can continue to slow to the point where the business is losing money or the brand re-evaluates its strategy and adopts one that is more dynamic which reflects the business’ desire for continued success.
Seeing all the possibilities
Dynamic strategy is a simple term simply meaning that the strategy is agile, malleable, and adaptable. These however are mere characteristics. The key to strategic dynamism is seeing all the different possibilities and committing to exploring them. Without this, any strategy a business might formulate won’t help it depart from the conventional path that it is stuck on.
Seeing all the different possibilities means exactly that. The business must consider what it could do as well as what it can do. This means engaging in projects and ventures that create new revenue streams and new boxes on balance sheets besides product sales. In a study conducted by Meji, the most consistently earning online businesses, have collaborated or partnered with other businesses. The nature of these partnerships and collaborations may result in marketing but are not exclusive to it.
One possibility that online retailers and e-commerce businesses naturally ignore is putting their brands in places other than the Internet. Meji saw an online cosmetics brand that originally started in the owner’s kitchen, take the daunting step of putting their products in stores and salons. Not only did this increase brand visibility to a more offline demographic but the ambitious feat saw the brand’s name receive an air of legitimacy and great approval from the cosmeticians who are important and respected voices in the industry.
Optimal timing is paramount
It is important for online retailers and e-commerce businesses to know when to make changes in strategy. To achieve the desired outcome, the strategy a business implements needs to be appropriate with regard to the business’ performance, organizational structure, and financial projections. Ambition is what drives any business but managing that ambition ensures success.
The optimal time for a business to begin adopting more dynamic strategies is when the business has attained steady income and growth and has undergone internal procedures to improve the financial and organizational health of the business. The business needs to be stable enough to withstand a change that may rattle different areas of the operation.
Completing the puzzle
Profit and Growth are the principal objectives of dynamic business strategies but for online retailers and e-commerce businesses, a dynamic business strategy means growing the business beyond traditional revenue streams. Meji helps online retailers increase growth by formulating and implementing dynamic strategies and arranging innovative and complex partnerships with other companies and brands.