The times are a changing, and my concern for my business is that we are left in the dust of technological advancement and changing consumer behaviours, can we adapt quick enough and not be scared to embrace trends and technology?
I’m watching competitors, riding a wave a “good” business and waiting until it crashes to steer in a new direction. You will be left behind, make no mistake, the train for the future of ecommerce is leaving the station, and if you do not get on now, it won’t be a matter of getting on the next stop, the next stop won’t even exist by the time you get there.
So what am I doing? I’m guessing, albeit an educated guess with every piece of data I can scrap together, it’s about to get a lot harder to capture attention. Not just in creating engaging content, but the cost of acquisition. This being the case, I’m going all in on brand, who are we, what are we doing, what is our purpose to the community.
Don’t get me wrong, quality product is greatly important but brand is what keeps you strong through ups downs and side ways market movements.
Define yourself, otherwise the market will place the definition on you. Your customers past, present and future will define you. This is one of the only aspects of the business where you have full control. You are the curator of your persona, you choose who to engage with and how to engage. Be true to yourself and you’re brand, push through trying to do what everyone else is doing, make a call on being the best in the market.
I’m going to quote Seth Godin here from the first book of his I read and this quote has defined everything I do, “If you’re not aiming to be the best in the world, you should just quit now,”
If you’re not out there trying to be the best in your industry, if you’re just trying to get from one month to the next, why? What’s the point? If your goal is to be number two, how can you keep driving forward? I know I’m not number one, yet. But the point here is that you should be striving to that stop, if you’re not, you will not have a need for innovation, or a need to change your ways until it’s too late.
