“How to stay competitive in a challenging environment?” is a question Toyin Laketu answered when she joined Ethical Brand Directory in our supporting small business webinar series. She shared her expertise and presented a very relevant webinar providing great insight and advice on how businesses can operate through difficult climates.
Toyin Laketu, Founder of Onwards and Up
Toyin Laketu is the founder of Onwards and Up, a London based fashion business support and SEO consultancy, which aims to deliver hands on strategies, to help businesses achieve their goals both online and offline. Toyin has over 14 years of experience of working in international business development and has worked with many of the UK’s leading and emerging fashion, retail, lifestyle and consumer brands.
How to Stay Competitive in a Challenging Environment with Toyin Laketu
Toyin covered aspects such as how economic background and conditions affect businesses, the different types of business and economic trends, when there’s a time for reflection and how to best maintain competitiveness.
Supporting Small Businesses Webinar: How to Stay Competitive in a Challenging Environment Key Takeaways
- Business Purpose vs Goals: understanding the purpose behind your business, will help you establish the correct and most appropriate business goals. Have your long, mid and short term goals but also consider soft goals based around achievements and target driven goals, that are realistic.
- Maintaining Competitiveness: you don’t need lots of products to be successful, you just need the right product at the right price that customers want. As a business now is the time to review your product in terms of what you have and what’s performing well and what’s not performing well. What trends can you capitalise on with your existing products and marketing?
- Competitor Analysis: find your competitors and understand their business model. Understand Where are they selling? What’s their success rate? Where are the gaps which you can compete? If they have paid advertising, jump into their sponsored ad funnel by clicking on their website and track their journey on social media to see how they are marketing their brand at every different level and stage of their sales funnel.
Supporting Small Businesses Webinar: Staying Competitive in a Challenging Environment Q&A
Q: Could you elaborate which channels you think are best to prioritise for an ecommerce business with a limited budget.
A: The best channel for your brand will be dependent on your products and who your audience is. Instagram may be the easiest to go to, but it’s important to understand who your audience is and where they sit. A great source for an ecommerce business would be Google Analytics. It breaks down all the different social media channels down to your mailing list and will tell you where people are coming from and will also tell you what channels are converting into sales and it’s free of charge! A great tool to use as data doesn’t lie.
Q: What tools would you recommend to track competitor analysis?
A: Industry magazines and content such as Business of Fashion, WGSN and LS:N are good to follow to understand what is going in on the market. Once they reopen, utilise the services of The British Library, which is a great business library where you can use resources to get information on your competitors and what’s going on in your industry.
Q: How would you suggest a person separates themselves from their personal brand when their brand is an extension of themselves?
A: Consider looking at your business through a third eye and take feedback from an external source and use that to work towards creating a brand that’s focused much more on your customer. A good tool for this would be Test My Site, where you can submit your website URL to receive a five minute video review of your website.