A lot can be said about 2020 except that it hasn’t taught us invaluable lessons about humanity, society and our ability to adapt.
From digital marketing specialists to business advisors to Shopify experts to entrepreneurs to these men and women share what most resonates for them both professionally and personally as they consider the learnings they will carry with them into 2021.
Jesse Schoberg, CEO at DropInBlog
Our focus for next year is building out integrations with as many platforms as possible. Everybody's making courses now and of course, people need a blog.For them having a blog is just a thorn in the side because they just want to have a teaching platform with a subscription service and they don't care about making a content platform. So we kind of pull that thorn out of their side and can work as a partnership there. And that works really well.
We're past the beta stage now and we have a very solid product that is being used widely. We’re now in the growth phase of like and we’re looking to see how we get this to the most people. For us it's through these partnerships of integration.
Jesse previously featured in Ep 30 and Ep 45. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Elle McCann, Shopify Expert
I'm a huge planner and I started 2020 with all these plans and my word for the year was consistent. I feel like 2020 just laughed at it. Halfway through the year I was like, ‘Okay, my new word for 2020 is flexible’.
The businesses that are making it through the pandemic, or even thriving throughout this process, are the ones that are pivoting. So being flexible and going okay, yes, I had these other plans, but how can I make it work now? How can I pivot and give a new angle or a new spin to it. And I think that's really what I'm going to be taking in with my business moving forward. Because I will admit, like I've been in business for 10 years, and I'm a pretty rigid planner. And I learned some pretty good life lessons this year - you just have got to roll with the punches and just accept it is what it is and move on. Pivot, do what we need to do to get it done.
Elle previously featured in Ep 33 and Ep 43. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Tim Hughes, Co Founder and CEO at DLA Ignite
2020 has changed the way that we do business.
I live in London, I think that there was an expectation, you know, if there was going to be a course in Singapore, I'd have to get on a plane and fly to Singapore. I now don't think that is expected. And for me, that's a great thing. Yeah. I like it. I love Singapore. But going to Singapore, just to speak for an hour, and then coming home again, doesn't feel like a good use of my time, even going into London for meetings, I think has changed. Yeah. And what used to happen would be, you'd say when are you next in London, and then it'd be like three weeks away. But whereas now, you can have a call with somebody, and it will be tomorrow or the day after. And so the speed of business is actually picked up.
From my perspective, I've gained hours in the day. I'm training again, I'm doing a meditation course and I think it has slowed everybody down. It’s connected everybody to realise that there's actually more important things in life than just going to work. Work is important, because it provides us with the money to enable us to buy the things that we want.
I think we could debate about what level of normality that we're going to go back to. I think we're living with COVID. Talking to some people, what they're predicting will happen is that in the past, we had 80% of the people in the office and 20% of the people were either remote or travelling. And what we're going to do is we're going to go to 20% of the people in the office, because some people need to be there, because they're single, they may not have the ability to work from home, there may be a vulnerability of them working from home. But 80% of the people will be working from home, and we'll see that switch. I think that will become normal.
I apologize for talking about this because I'm biased, but one of the things, you got to remember that when when we built the art, the programmes that we generated, for helping people to sell on social, they they're a bit like my children, you know, that I've nurtured them. And I've created them and so I want them to do well in the world. And, and actually, what we've found is that with our clients, their ability to generate business, and lead to meetings has gone up in the pandemic, not down. And while that may sound “Well, yeah, he will say that because he sells those programmes”, the thing that's interesting to me is that there's been a complete shift to people being online. I'm seeing more people active on LinkedIn. They're not doing the right things. They're generally doing the wrong things. But there's an activity and that’s because we're sitting at home in our pyjamas. And we're up because when we're not in the office, so what are we going to do? We're going to go online. That's where we're spending our time.
I still think the shift that's taking place. Recent research from McKinsey showed that there was eCommerce uptake. There was the amount of eCommerce uptake in the last three months that was the same as what we'd have for the last 10 years. So we had 10 years worth of digital transformation in the last three months. And I still think looking back, we don't realise how much transformation is actually taking place. Because we're generally thinking about the here and now and worrying about whether we're going to see our dad or something like that. Rather than actually seeing and looking around and seeing the transformation. There's been so much of people getting used to buying stuff online. And the change, I think it's gonna be this massive.
Tim previously featured in Ep 32 and Ep 45. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Brad Wayland
We have this theory, that 2021 is going to be a really crazy year for selling. And the reason is because COVID has helped more businesses than it's hurt. In terms of online, online businesses have been inordinately big gainers and so we have this theory that we're going to be overwhelmed with work in 2021. Because people are going to say, hey, in March, I got this new uptick. And so when they get to March of next year, they're going to say, hey, I've got a year's worth of history. Now my business is worth a lot more than what it's always on the trailing 12 months
There’s so much uncertainty around us and I think there's kind of an air of caution kind of going around in here, too. But that's one of the things for 2021 is that we really feel like a lot of these sellers are going to try to capitalise and the other thing we're seeing is that private equity is running into eCommerce at an alarming speed right now.
The flight to safety is eCommerce now and so think that 2021 could be a year where I think what we've done with pandemic, just as a general rule, I think that we have pushed a fast forward button. To me, this fast forward button that's happening, it's going to crush traditional retail faster. It's gonna help internet businesses faster. And so we're getting not only a flood of people that are going to potentially want to sell but you're also going to get a flood of people who potentially want to participate. Yeah, and so I really feel like it's already happening, but I feel like 2021 could be a real banner year in terms of just seeing electronic commerce, kind of continuing to squash out the old guard.
Brad previously featured in Ep 40. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Joanna Steele, Digital Marketing and eCommerce Expert
Personally, I can say don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. This time last year, I began a six month sabbatical where I travelled South America, Southeast Asia and Western Africa. And to think one year on, you know, travelling is really difficult. That's a real example of, when you want to do something and can just go for it, try not to hesitate because you never know when that opportunity might be taken away from you.
From an eCommerce digital marketing perspective, I think this year has proven that CGC user generated content, customer generated content is here to stay right. And it's not going anywhere. And, you know, with the increasing usage of Tik Tok, particularly among the Gen Z generation, we're seeing user generated content literally taking over. And so if anyone was thinking that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were going away, I think this has proven that they're here to stay and that there's going to be some new platforms bringing out new features to compete for customers.
Joanna previously featured in Ep 29 and Ep 43. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Simon Driscoll, Owner and Formulator at UXB Natural Skincare
The thing I've learned is that once you sell one thing, you can probably sell another thing to the same person. If you have the right upsells, they can add as much as 30-40% to your bottom line. It’s easy picking because you already have the customers buying from you and you can increase their average order value with the right upsells.
The other thing that has kind of worked for me is content marketing. I've got some nice videos on YouTube and some blog posts that are getting some traction and I'm going to invest a bit more in content. If you look at any of the big beauty companies, they have huge social media and content marketing teams or agencies working for them to create a bit of buzz around the brand. Next year I am going to hit the ground running with content marketing.
Simon previously featured on a Coaching Call and Ep 43. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Kath Pay, Founder and CEO at Holistic Email Marketing
I think everyone's been learning to appreciate what you've got and see if you can improve it and other people's lives as well.
I've been incredibly fortunate, and I have not suffered hardship at all. However, I know that many are suffering on a day to day basis and so life learning also is to show empathy in your day to day, as a human, as a person with other people. Don't be quick to scold or quick to critique.
We can carry that same empathy over to our email marketing. Customer focus has really come to the forefront during 2020. Brands that have recognised and understood that from early on, are becoming more customer centric and more helpful marketing.
Understand your customers, give them the help they need and show some empathy and it will definitely pay off. It will pay off in the short run, but also pay off in the long run because people will remember that experience and note that you are a brand that stood out from the crowd.
Kath previously featured in Ep 35 and Ep 45. Connect with her on LinkedIn.