Ecommerce: 2 tips to help small businesses navigate multichannel marketing
This year at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Nicole Snow, Founder, Darn Good Yarn, sat down with Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, in the MarketingSherpa Media Center to discuss the challenges of navigating a multichannel digital landscape while retaining a small business identity.
Darn Good Yarn’s value proposition is based on stimulating growth in poverty-stricken areas of Nepal and India by recycling silk yarn into products Nicole imports and sells in the United States.
Nicole does not have a background of making yarn. In fact, when she began, knitting was only a hobby.
“[Starting my business was] a lot of learning and I tried to do things on the cheap; I was self-funded,” she said. “It was a real benefit because I respected every single marketing dollar. Every single test I did had to be really the right choice for me as a business.”
These careful business decisions penetrate the whole of Nicole’s business, from hiring employees to protecting her suppliers.
“People around the world work for me,” Nicole said. “I’m pretty proud of that business model because it really is indicative of a newer economy.”
Nicole has been very protective over the growth of her company, both in the U.S. and abroad.
She insisted part of becoming a successful small business includes “controlling growth and not allowing it to just blow up.”
“Then, you start getting abuses of supply chains and of humans that way and that’s important to us, to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she explained.
Here were two important takeaways Nicole offered to help small businesses navigate a multichannel digital world:
- Purposefully enter channels – Find a few channels that work best for your small business because you can’t be everywhere.
- Find advocates – Look for supporters who want you to succeed and build relationships with them.
Just posted… see how Nicole Snow’s small biz @darngoodyarn saw a 2900% inc. in growth #IRCE http://t.co/DPZNkGFKju pic.twitter.com/vRmMA6j2du
— MarketingSherpa (@MarketingSherpa) June 12, 2014
Remember your roots
Let your passion bleed through every decision that you make for your business.
As companies grow, adaptations to an organization’s process and strategy are inevitable. We surveyed 4,436 marketers on how management styles and approaches should shift as ecommerce companies grow. You can see that data on page 15 of the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study.
Want to see more interviews with IRCE speakers, industry experts and in-the-trenches marketers from the MarketingSherpa Media Center? All 32 exclusive interviews from IRCE are available for viewing.
