Busi­ness­es need to adapt to the post-COVID-19 changes, or they will be ex­tinct.

This is the ad­vice from mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Deb­bie Jol­lie, as she said any com­pa­ny, whether large, medi­um or small, that is not cre­at­ing some kind of dig­i­tal pres­ence will be­come a di­nosaur.

In an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian last week, Jol­lie who op­er­ates her own mar­ket­ing agency, point­ed out that busi­ness­es must fo­cus on ex­ist­ing cus­tomers, as the pan­dem­ic has caused many Caribbean busi­ness­es to lose clien­tele, so it is im­por­tant to fo­cus on re­tain­ing or up-sell­ing to those clients.

As well, she said it is im­por­tant to pay at­ten­tion to search trends and, with chang­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour, it is key to stay on top of search trends and ad­just the con­tent strat­e­gy ac­cord­ing­ly. Jol­lie not­ed that there are great deal of AI tools that can be used, but Google Trends is ac­tu­al­ly a good tool to learn more about busi­ness­es and in­dus­tries.

An­oth­er use­ful tool she iden­ti­fied was to lean in­to da­ta, as it is read­i­ly avail­able and easy to ac­cess on so­cial me­dia chan­nels.

So­cial me­dia trends

Delv­ing more in­to the so­cial me­dia as­pect, Jol­lie said op­er­at­ing as a bou­tique mar­ket­ing agency for the past ten years, so­cial me­dia has been ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to her busi­ness.

“So­cial me­dia has helped me to de­fine my brand and make a name for my­self not on­ly in Trinidad but through­out the wider Caribbean, es­pe­cial­ly through Linkedin. I have al­so helped en­tre­pre­neurs launch their busi­ness­es on­line cre­at­ing brand­ed prod­ucts, web­sites and a so­cial me­dia pres­ence. I have shown clients how to use Linkedin and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms to show­case their ser­vices and en­gage with po­ten­tial clients,” she said.

The mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant ex­plained that so­cial me­dia is al­so an ex­cel­lent tool for build­ing your brand. It helps to hu­man­ise brands and build trust, loy­al­ty and recog­ni­tion.

“With­out go­ing in­to specifics, I have helped clients launch per­son­al brands on so­cial me­dia, launch their books, ac­quire job op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as sell prod­ucts and ser­vices.”

Asked how many firms she has been able to as­sist over the years to de­vel­op bet­ter mar­ket­ing strate­gies, Jol­lie in­di­cat­ed that in the last ten years, she has helped over 100 firms, which con­sist of small, medi­um, and large firms.

“They span ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly from Trinidad and To­ba­go go­ing right up to clients in The Ba­hamas and Bermu­da. They al­so cov­er a va­ri­ety of in­dus­tries from fi­nan­cial, acad­e­mia, en­gi­neer­ing and project man­age­ment, con­sul­tan­cy, mar­itime and the list goes on.”

In terms of in­di­vid­u­als, she fa­cil­i­tat­ed well over 3,000 peo­ple in the last ten years through her work­shops in so­cial me­dia and per­son­al brand­ing.

Con­sul­tan­cy is al­so about help­ing new en­tre­pre­neurs scale up their busi­ness­es, Jol­lie said, adding that sev­er­al com­pa­nies have seen a five to ten per cent in­crease in their rev­enue af­ter de­ploy­ing her ser­vices for at least a year.

“I usu­al­ly work with clients, re­view­ing their ac­tiv­i­ties quar­ter­ly and re­fin­ing them to achieve goals. My sig­na­ture ser­vice is to help or­gan­i­sa­tions im­prove their top line through what is called a sales and mar­ket­ing au­dit. This in­volves au­dit­ing a com­pa­ny’s cur­rent sales and mar­ket­ing op­er­a­tions and then de­vel­op­ing a ro­bust strat­e­gy to close gaps,” she dis­closed.

Mar­ket­ing strate­gies

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, many com­pa­nies used their down­time to de­vel­op bet­ter sales and mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

Jol­lie said there are more com­pa­nies seek­ing sales and mar­ket­ing ser­vices since the pan­dem­ic.

“The pro­vi­sion of web­sites and dig­i­tal ser­vices in­creased for my busi­ness by more than 25 per cent af­ter the pan­dem­ic. More and more or­gan­i­sa­tions have en­list­ed me for train­ing of their sales and mar­ket­ing teams, re­fin­ing their mar­ket­ing strate­gies and help­ing them de­vel­op their dig­i­tal pres­ence, “she re­marked.

Im­por­tance of cus­tomer ser­vice

Sev­er­al peo­ple have tire­less­ly com­plained about cus­tomer ser­vice in var­i­ous sec­tors. The mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant out­lined that the main way to over­come poor ser­vice is to train staff and al­so re-train to help peo­ple un­der­stand the crit­i­cal role of the cus­tomer in both the suc­cess of the com­pa­ny and the em­ploy­ee.

“For train­ing to be suc­cess­ful it must be on­go­ing, but very few com­pa­nies are will­ing to in­vest in longer-term train­ing. One-day train­ing has its role but if you want to ef­fect change, es­pe­cial­ly in mid­dle and low­er-lev­el man­age­ment, on­go­ing train­ing is a must. I have worked with com­pa­nies in tourism, acad­e­mia, util­i­ties, and fi­nan­cial ser­vices help­ing them with cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing. This train­ing has not on­ly been for T&T but I have al­so de­ployed this for clients in Guyana and Grena­da, Jol­lie re­marked.

Eco­nom­ic cli­mate

Small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es felt the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic the most, so Busi­ness Guardian asked if it was fea­si­ble for peo­ple to branch off on their own.

Jol­lie quick­ly said “YES” it is still fea­si­ble and less risky giv­en the move­ment of tech­nol­o­gy.

“It is fair­ly easy to set up so­cial me­dia plat­forms and start a ba­sic web­site even if you are not a web de­vel­op­er. I would say, how­ev­er, if you are a ser­vice provider or the cre­ator of dig­i­tal prod­ucts… This is far less risky than open­ing a prod­uct-based com­pa­ny or a brick-and-mor­tar store. I would ad­vise any­one to do as much re­search as pos­si­ble on their in­dus­try and com­peti­tors be­fore tak­ing that leap,” she re­vealed.

With her bou­tique mar­ket­ing agency achiev­ing its tenth an­niver­sary this month, Jol­lie said there have been sev­er­al chal­lenges, such as fi­nanc­ing.

“I boot-strapped my busi­ness in the be­gin­ning. Now al­though this is good, it al­so slowed my abil­i­ty to grow as I sim­ply didn’t have fi­nan­cial re­sources to out­source peo­ple or even in­vest in mar­ket­ing tech equip­ment.”

An­oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge that she en­coun­tered was learn­ing when to aban­don prod­ucts or ser­vices that com­mer­cial­ly don’t make sense, as she said there was a time in busi­ness when she was so afraid to fail.

“I had in­vest­ed so much time and en­er­gy in cre­at­ing cer­tain prod­ucts that when they were not work­ing in the mar­ket­place any­more, I saw it as a stain on my en­tre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney.

“The truth is all the suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs like Steve Jobs and Jeff Be­zos have prod­ucts they have launched and de­cid­ed to take off the mar­ket be­cause they don’t make dol­lars and cents any­more,” Jol­lie high­light­ed.

The mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant is al­so known as the stam­mer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tor due to her speech im­ped­i­ment, but this has not stopped her from host­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops.

“The main tools that as­sist­ed me over the years were teach­ing and pub­lic speak­ing. I knew that if I liked mar­ket­ing and the arts, I would need to be able to com­mand my voice, so I got in­to teach­ing al­most 17 years ago and stayed,” Jol­lie added.

Tes­ti­monies

A few pro­fes­sion­als and busi­ness­es at­test­ed to how use­ful Jol­lie’s ad­vice and knowl­edge have been.

Dr In­drani Bachan-Per­sad, head of Aca­d­e­m­ic/In­dus­try Part­ner­ships, at The UWI who was a client in Ju­ly 2021, said: “Deb­bie has con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing and brand­ing. She is al­so very en­gag­ing and per­son­able as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in one of her ses­sions and thought it was val­ue for mon­ey.”

Tim­o­thy Odiean, cer­ti­fied whisky spe­cial­ist, who was a client in Jan­u­ary 2021, stat­ed, “Deb­bie was able to make the time to chat with me to first un­der­stand my vi­sion, then give me some ac­tion­able ad­vice and sug­ges­tions on things I should im­ple­ment im­me­di­ate­ly. I will con­tin­ue to fol­low her ad­vice and I look for­ward to a fol­low-up ses­sion in the fu­ture.”

Lin­da A.S. Dias deputy head, Pro­gramme Man­age­ment Of­fice at the Gov­ern­ment of Montser­rat who par­tic­i­pat­ed in two sem­i­nars in De­cem­ber 2019, said, “Deb­bie’s pre­sen­ta­tion re­spond­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to the needs of both the con­ven­tion and the con­text and was able to en­gage the par­tic­i­pants dur­ing these ses­sions. I would rec­om­mend her as both a sem­i­nar fa­cil­i­ta­tor as well as a pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket­ing strate­gist.”