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Recession. Rising ad costs. Economic uncertainty. Consumers tightening their belts. Online shopping habits dipping from the boom days of lockdown. It doesn’t make for great reading for an ecommerce business, does it?
Yet one hugely important and often-overlooked approach tackles all of these problems. It doesn’t solve them, but it does put you on a much better footing to deal with them. And once you’re on a better footing, you’ll be in a stronger position to scale your ecommerce business in the face of recession.
We’re talking about building a community-led brand for your business. This has the power to strengthen the majority of ecommerce businesses even in a difficult economic climate. That’s why we made it the subject of our new whitepaper.
If you’re able to channel the ideas covered into your business, you’ll be on track to:
But, if you want to scale, you first need to understand the size of the challenge.
Clearly, the impending recession is the big one. People will have less disposable income available, so you’ll be competing for a slice of a pie that’s shrinking. But problems impacting the ecommerce industry go beyond the headline factor of recession. Issues troubling your business right now might include:
Cost-per-click is increasing steadily across all major advertising platforms and marketplaces, including Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, and TikTok. With new privacy policies impacting Apple devices, it’s also becoming harder to target and reach audiences cost effectively.
Supply chains have still not fully recovered from the effects of the pandemic. A scarcity of raw materials, longer lead times, and price increases are all creating an environment where selling online costs more and takes longer than it did pre-pandemic. Supply chain uncertainty has a financial impact but also exposes you to disappointing customers with out-of-stock items or delayed deliveries.
The new privacy policies we mentioned reflect wider concerns about personal data. Consumers are gravitating towards brands they trust, increasingly wary of sharing personal data with advertisers, and tired of social media ads in general. That makes it very difficult for new and growing ecommerce brands to make their mark if they’re only going down ecommerce’s well-worn paid media route.
Consumers have returned to offline shopping in greater numbers than some expected after the pandemic. During lockdown, nearly all retail was online. This trend was expected to have a long-term effect on accelerating ecommerce growth. Instead, the breakdown between offline and online shopping has now reverted to roughly where it would be if Covid-19 had never happened.
Against this backdrop, a loyal group of advocates who value and support your brand is more important than ever.
Building your community is about creating an emotional bond with consumers. But heading into the process with that fuzzy feeling front and centre might cloud your judgement. It's important to fully recognise the business value of your brand's community. This is a business decision that will have measurable outcomes.
Develop a clear sense of why you’re building a community, then do so with that purpose in mind. You’ll first need to rely heavily on existing advocates around your brand, but long-term success will depend on bringing new customers along for the ride.
We take a more detailed look at how to lay the foundations on which to build your brand community in the whitepaper.
With the right foundations in place, there are several ways to instantly start scaling your community. You can do this by:
In our white paper, you’ll find actionable insights to help you bring these and other community-building tactics to your brand. You’ll also see examples of how other brands have already adopted each approach and the results they’ve achieved.
Download now to start building your community-led brand.
Juni is the financial platform built for ecommerce. We give you a unified view of your finances, with cards, mulitcurrency accounts, and banking, accounting and advertising integrations - all in one place. We can even help boost your cash flow with working capital, cashback and more.
Juni will not share your information with any third parties except for our verified partner network. Submit your email for even more valuable content, delivered straight to your inbox.