admin, Author at Venture Motion

Famous Tech Business Pivots

Posted on July 13, 2020November 5, 2024 by admin

Pivots can be instrumental in helping a business achieve success. Rarely will a company be launched off the back of the idea that will eventually make them a household name. In fact, it’s very common for businesses to re-evaluate their situation and make major changes to one of the fundamental aspects of their business to achieve success.

From Netflix to Nintendo, there have been some inspiring companies over the years who have engaged in large-scale pivots.

The Nintendo Business Pivot

While Nintendo may now be synonymous with video games in the minds of many, with the likes of Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing and Pokémon in their repertoire, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, Nintendo began life back in 1889 as a card game company

By the late 1950s, Japanese society was changing, and Nintendo’s customer base had found new hobbies Nintendo pivoted, experimenting with a number of business concepts.

The company would try everything from taxi services to instant rice to pay-by-the-hour ‘love hotels’ before finally settling on a brand new technology to drive them forward. After experimentation with a range of gaming technologies throughout the 70s, in 1981, the Nintendo we know today was born with the release of Donkey Kong on arcade machines across the world

The Airbnb Business Pivot

In October 2007, Airbnb started life on the floor of founders’ Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia’s living room. The two roommates came up with the idea of renting out an inflatable air mattress in their San Francisco apartment, along with a cooked breakfast, to offer an affordable place to stay among the city’s overpriced and overbooked hotels. They funded their initial venture – AirBed & Breakfast – by selling cereal boxes for both the Obama and McCain campaigns during the 2008 presidential election. By the summer of 2008, they’d got their business off the ground.

AirBed & Breakfast’s main clients were visitors to San Francisco’s many tech conferences, meaning that their business acted as a business networking opportunity as well as accommodation. Realising that renting out a mattress on their floor wasn’t sustainable, the founders of the company rebranded as Airbnb and launched their new website in March 2009.

Following the pivot from quirky accommodation with a networking twist into a unique opportunity for guests to stay in homes around the world, the success of Airbnb grew rapidly. In just three years, over 10 million people had booked an Airbnb, and by October 2019, more than 2 million people were staying in Airbnb properties every night – making them the largest accommodation company without even owning a hotel.

The Netflix Business Pivot

Netflix is one of the most famous examples of a company using new technology to pivot their business into a far more profitable position. Ever on top of trends, Netflix began as a way for people to rent DVDs over the internet all the way back in 1997 – the year the DVD format was launched in North America.

While their DVD-to-your-door service was popular, Netflix’s founders always wanted to offer movies to rent online, but the low download speeds of the dial-up era made that an impossibility. Unlike their rivals in the now all but defunct Blockbuster, once DVD sales began to decline as online streaming grew, Netflix moved away from their DVD service. Despite having delivered over a billion DVDs in their first ten years of operation, they took the risk of pivoting to an entirely streaming-based service and, by 2018, had over 137 million subscribers worldwide.

The Shopify Business Pivot

Shopify’s pivot is one of our favourites, as it truly shows how great marketing technology can overshadow the business it was built for. After launching a snowboarding e-commerce website in 2004 Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake realised that none of the e-commerce content management systems available to them were any good – so they decided to develop their own.

Their creation went on to become Shopify. Realising that the technology platform they’d created to launch their hobby website Snowdevil would be far more profitable than the snowboarding store itself, they began selling their creation to other e-commerce companies.

From snowboard company to the world’s largest e-commerce storefront is one of the most ridiculous pivots to have ever occurred, but the founders of Shopify managed to pull it off thanks to their interest in the cutting edge of marketing technology.

How could your business pivot with technology?

While some companies have pivoted in an entirely new direction that’s not usually essential. Businesses are facing an uncertain future ahead thanks to the new practices that have become normalised during the Coronavirus pandemic.

From home working to a renewed focus on online shopping, the changes to the business world don’t mean your business has to give up, but a marketing technology enhanced pivot can definitely help you to adapt.

It may feel like you’ll need a mass restructuring of your business, but your focus should be on enhancing and optimising the services you already have using technology that is readily available to you. We’ve already helped our clients adapt to the strange future ahead with a range of marketing technologies, as we explore below.

During the lockdown we helped many of our clients adapt and pivot their own operations. We built virtual call centres, ecommerce marketing and stock fulfilment automations and converted manual operations into digital and automated processes, streamlining their businesses not just for the lockdown but for the future of their businesses.

What did the ecommerce sector learn from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic?

Posted on April 9, 2020November 5, 2024 by admin

COVID-19 had a huge impact on digital marketing and commerce, forcing many industries to re-think about the way they operate. While the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic had a very negative impact in many areas, it could prove to have had a positive impact on the ecommerce industry.

Why do we expect to see a growth in ecommerce?

Ecommerce has been steadily growing for years, with more and more businesses introducing an online shopping element to their websites. Despite this, high-street shops are still popular, seeing millions of customers every year. However, in early 2020, that started to change.

New government guidelines brought about thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic meant that all non-essential shops had to close their doors in April of 2020. Naturally, this was a major impediment to a variety of businesses, but many online industries saw almost no changes, while some began doing even better than usual.

While it’s impossible to say whether it’s the case yet, we predict that due to the closure of many traditional shops, online retailers may look back and see a boom while the high streets were closed. 2020 proved to be the year where ecommerce became well and truly essential. Because of this, offering existing and new customers a way to purchase products even when the shopfront is closed, ensure’s that you’ll be able to keep your business running even in times of crisis.

A new type of ecommerce customer

With shops being forced to close in line with new government guidelines, ecommerce websites saw substantial growth in their audience. Self-isolation was particularly important for elderly people, a group historically less likely to engage in online shopping. However, unable to get to the shops in person, it’s likely that more and more members of groups such as this began moving their spending power online.

With these new customers entering the ecommerce market for the first time, the importance of having an ecommerce component within your business is highlighted. For the first time ever, many bricks and mortar businesses who rely on the patronage of elderly and vulnerable customers need to seriously consider bringing their business online.

A different online catalogue

Traditionally, fashion is the best performing industry online. Whether that’s from the ecommerce wing of high street retailers, high-end designer brands or online-only retailers such as Asos and Boohoo.com. Alongside fashion, travel companies and tech companies are some of the other top-performing ecommerce industries, but with people being forced to stay home, it’s likely that certain retail sectors which usually under-perform online started to see a big boost.

Health and beauty, as well as office supplies companies rely on in-store footfall to generate revenue, but both likely saw major growth in the wake of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. If you’re in these sectors and have put off implementing ecommerce into your website as your industry is not historically a high-performer when it comes to online shopping, now is the time to change that. Even after the pandemic, these new shopping habits are unlikely to change any time soon.

It’s impossible to say exactly how the ecommerce market will look following the Coronavirus pandemic, but we have no doubt that it’ll see some serious growth. If you’re now considering bringing an ecommerce element into your website, get in touch with Venture Motion to see how we can help. We’ll bring all of your products online and create a streamlined ecommerce site that your customers will love.

Business lessons we learned thanks to social distancing

Posted on March 27, 2020November 5, 2024 by admin

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on society at the start of 2020. Now, with the government’s call to implement as much social distancing and self-isolation as possible, more people than ever have begun working from home.

Some businesses have excelled during this time of self-isolation and social distancing, shifting to a fully cloud-based business model and allowing employees to work from home. Despite this, COVID-19 has alo highlighted issues in some companies where it has highlighted areas in which businesses suffer due to a lack of full online integration.

Online business is now, not the future

Some companies have avoided online integration as much as possible, despite a web presence being almost essential for over a decade. Aside from the very smallest independent high street retailers, a web presence is almost always required.

More and more people are doing their shopping entirely online, so it should go without saying that every retailer needs to have an ecommerce website. No matter what you are selling, if it’s possible to ship it to customers, it needs to be available online.

In 2020, not having an ecommerce component to your business will ensure that your business is overlooked dramatically. If you’ve never dipped your feet into the ecommerce world, it can be daunting, but there are plenty of consultation services available to ensure that you can build the online wing of your business with ease.

Cloud-based workspaces are becoming essential

Some of the earliest advice the government provided to workers in the UK regarding the COVID-19 outbreak was that, where possible, people should work from home. Unfortunately, many businesses were not able to offer this to their employees.

Alongside these businesses were companies that did allow their employees to work from home, but whose productivity took a major hit as a result. Despite allowing employees to work from home, many companies did not have the provisions in place to ensure that the transition from office to home was seamless. This meant that employees were unable to do their job as well as they usually can.

This highlights a need for full cloud integration into as many companies as possible. Ensuring staff are able to perform all tasks online means that, in situations where employees are working from home, business can continue as usual. Not only will this lead to a happier workforce – as more and more people are throwing themselves behind flexible working – but it means that in times of crisis where people are forced to work from home, that your business can get by with relative ease.

SEO is the long-term digital marketing solution

Social distancing and self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact businesses can feel not only in the office, but also from their marketing efforts. When a business is forced into a situation where marketing cuts need to happen, the obvious targets are expensive adwords and display campaigns – but what about SEO?

Search engine optimisation has always been a long-term process, and companies who have invested in SEO are continuing to reap the rewards of their investment even when budget cuts are made elsewhere. Most SEO relies on technical amends to the website that will remain active whether or not continuous investment is made into the search marketing. While organic traffic may take a hit during a crisis, the output of an SEO team – who can almost always work remotely – will remain high.

Adaptable, affordable and able to remain active through almost anything. The SEO industry has proven itself to be capable of riding out a crisis and continuing to have a positive impact on client businesses.

If you need help getting your business online or cloud-optimised, or if you need some long-term technical search optimisation, get in touch with us today. We can offer you a free consultation to discuss how to optimise all facets of your website for the future.

The Voice Revolution: Audio content is quietly taking over and your business can’t miss out

Posted on March 27, 2020November 5, 2024 by admin

If we get away from all the jargon, marketing is about putting your business in front of the right people and while they’re paying attention. More and more, we’re reaching for our headphones for entertainment, enjoyment, and online shopping.

This is how your business can get involved in the voice revolution.

There are 7 million podcast fans in the UK

Over 7 million of us listen to podcasts every week – a 24% increase on 2018’s figures. This isn’t a passing interest either, half of current podcast listeners have been regularly subscribing to podcasts for over 2 years. The top three genres are entertainment, comedy, and discussion & talk shows.

Amazon acquired Audible for $300 million back in 2008, showing they were already interested in producing digital content. As usual, Amazon’s speculation was right. The US is now the world’s biggest audio market, generating audiobook sales of over $2.5 billion.

Why we love flexible, accessible content

We’re making and consuming more audio content than ever before, partly because audio content fits comfortably with any kind of busy lifestyle. Audio content is one of the most flexible mediums. Unlike video or written content, you can choose to give an audiobook or podcast your full attention, or listen during your commute or while you’re working.

Video hasn’t been entirely replaced by audio content – podcasts with videos are one of the most popular amongst listeners. YouTube is the preferred podcasting platform for 18-54 year olds.

There’s no perfect length for video and audio podcast. Successful content can range from 20 minutes to several hours, it all depends on whether it gains an audience or not. Micro video content like TikTok has become massively shareable, but there’s still a desire for long-form content, which is best suited to audio.

Voice assistants are changing

Home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home have become a normal part of our home and work life. 65% think using voice assistants have changed their behaviour.

The top three functions are playing music, getting weather updates, and searching Google for specific information. 43% of us make purchases with our voice assistants too, particularly from Amazon and food delivery services.

As our home assistants gain more functions, talking is beginning to replace tapping and swiping for specific functions. Search is now vocal. This is a massive opportunity for brands trying to reach people when they’re thinking about buying.

Why your business needs to start creating audio content

One of the most influential voices in business, Gary Vaynerchuk, is particularly passionate about audio content. He thinks people’s appetite for audio content is only getting bigger, and the “the companies that create the best originals are going to win”.

Quality over quantity is essential. If your brand is going to start pushing out audio content, whether that’s Alexa Skills or podcasts, it’s vital to be engaging and audience-specific. Only then can you unlock the benefits of reaching new people in the right frame of mind.

Create content that your audience really wants to listen to

You don’t have to start from scratch. You can repurpose your existing written and video content to create new, engaging audio content. Venture Motion can help you create an audio marketing strategy that keeps developing.

Author: admin