Someone asked "What's been the toughest obstacle for you running a business in an oversaturated market?" To be honest it's not just one thing but I will try to elaborate on what's been the most difficult so far. I remember being a Merchandiser for Coca Cola waking up day after day, walking in and out of grocery stores, and walking down countless aisles looking at the same products stocked by various vendors representing brand after brand. Each brand fighting for shelf space in order to market their products to customers to win over their business. Of course the most notable brands would have the most shelf space giving them the advantage of having more products on the shelf or money making opportunities as my District Sales Manager would like to call it. I watched customers each and every day purchase from each brand though some garnered more appeal than others. You could definitely tell who spent the most money on their marketing campaigns based on shelf space and sales. It also showed me that no matter the product there is someone out there that want's it, or is willing to try it if you can make it to the shelf. You put it out there with effective branding and at a fair price someone will try it.
For online business owners, social media is our shelf unfortunately and there are no algorithms on those retail account aisles. Beating social platforms shadow banning and trying to reach potential customers has been one of the toughest aspects of running a business for me. I mean don't get me wrong it has been nice to get the orders that I have been getting, but when it's not moving as expected, and you're going over your insights to see how traffic and outreach is doing you begin to wonder if what you're selling is even being seen. Now you're forced to be creative and post more or develop ways to go viral and be seen so that you can produce the type of flow you're aiming for. It is also challenging trying to market on a slowly dying platform, as well as trying to learn how a new platform operates especially when what you're selling doesn't necessarily fit the demographic of that social media site.
I could be wrong but I feel like today running a business is harder than it's ever been. I mean yeah social media makes connecting a bit easier, but competing with algorithms in my opinion is of the devil. You have to be performing at a certain activity level in order to increase your reach. Now in the days of news paper if you purchased an ad there wasn't a system in place to stop it from being seen by people who read the news. The paper was coming out at the same time every day. Your ads were being seen by readers everyday! Now you have to post at the right time, or use the right hashtags in order for your products to be seen across many channels. You have to produce compelling video content AKA REELS to increase visual opportunities. It really stretches your creativity. If your following isn't large enough you won't rewarded if enough people do not interact with any of your post. Likes and shares generate more opportunities for your business to grow. If no one is liking and sharing good luck! Now I can't lie nothing pisses me off more than seeing a friend like everyone else's normal posts, and see you trying to make rent and will skip right over yours (lol). Like come on fam she took that same pose yesterday I'm trying to make it to the "shelf" here. Nah, but in all seriousness marketing on social media gives me a certain type of anxiety that standing in front of people and trying to sell face to face didn't.
It would be great to hand over day to day responsibilities of marketing to a company that specializes in it, but one of the downsides of being a small business owner is having the cash flow to do it. I would love to hire someone to take that off of my hands, but it's just not in the budget right now. Then there's search engine optimization on top of all things. I'm not even going to get into that today because that's an entire blog post within itself. After looking into SEO i'm not going to lie, if I can can make it to page two on Google I'd be totally fine with that. That was another joke I just wanted to draw a picture of how tedious it could be. Usually people who had a large following already don't have it quite as bad but for the ones that didn't I know for a fact that they feel what i'm saying in these paragraphs. Another limitation is that Instagram blocked me from selling directly from my IG page with little to no explanation. I was really heated about that but we have to keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances.
At the the end of the day competition will always be just that. Competition, and I like my chances up against anybody especially knowing that I have a good product. In a market where many others are doing the same thing my response is always "Just go to the bread aisle. I guarantee there's more than one brand of bread there and all of them are selling." The thing that separates mine from most is mine was carefully created with natural ingredients and wasn't just shaken or stirred together like a mixed drink. We're more like a fine wine or cognac that requires being sipped or taken in slow. Quality is never in a rush and that is why I'm confident that mine will stand the test of time. I just have to figure out other ways to be creative to get it in the hands of potential customers. One last thing I wanted to speak about was the importance of customer reviews. I know I know..... "you don't want to have to type anything" after your purchase, but man when I tell you that is probably the most important piece, I'm willing to give a discount on your purchase in exchange for a review. Word of mouth is everything and other than the actual sell I couldn't think of anything we would value more than your thoughts about our products. In closing, I would just like to thank each and everyone of you that has given us a chance and we look forward to serving you again.
426 Skin Care appreciates you for your business and thank you for reading our blog.