The COVID-19 pandemic has flipped the business world on its head and put many in a state of panic. Do you dare start your own company, launch your very own business venture in such a volatile climate? How do you ensure steady growth and success in these trying times? Building a profitable business was difficult enough without a pandemic on our hands, but nowadays, it might seem impossible for new entrepreneurs.

Indeed, if you fail to incorporate new technology and capitalize on opportunities in the digital world, you may not manage to stay afloat throughout 2021. It’s also important to focus on branding and building the right company image to enhance the customer’s experience.

The truth is that there are many pieces to this puzzle, which also means that succeeding as a startup is very much possible despite the pandemic. With all of that in mind, let’s go over the most important opportunities startups should use to their advantage in 2021 to achieve their goals.

Standardizing hyper-personalization to achieve success

Throughout the pandemic, digital commerce rose to unprecedented heights. Of course, this should come as no surprise because people were and still are forced into lockdown and have to buy products online predominantly. This created a boom in the E-commerce sector, but it also made this very lucrative field more competitive than ever before.

Yes, there is a lot you can gain by taking your startup into the E-commerce realm, but to succeed, you have to boost your personalization. The new term is hyper-personalization, and it means delivering the experiences that are unique to the individual to elevate their satisfaction, build loyalty, and inspire repeat business.

The way forward is to leverage data-gathering software and solutions that will pool crucial user and customer data from every online touchpoint to optimize the individual’s experience. This is something that the giants like Google and Apple excel at, but it’s something that businesses of all sizes can use nowadays especially growth-oriented startups.

Your goal should be to learn as much as you can about the customer, understand their unique needs and drivers, their habits and preferences, and create a hyper-personalized journey that will convert them into loyal brand advocates.

Diversify your payment methods and accept bitcoin

On the financial side of things, startups need to capitalize on every opportunity and accommodate the needs of the individual as well. You can’t force the customer to buy in a way or through a platform that they don’t know or like – that’s how you’ll alienate them for good. If their only choice is to punch their credit card info into your site, but they want to pay through a secure platform like PayPal, then you can bet that they’ll take their business elsewhere.

So, payment diversification is important, but so is payment innovation. For example, bitcoin is emerging as the new standard in the post-COVID-19 world; it is growing in value and has built a passionate global community. Now that people are increasingly mining and trading in cryptocurrencies, you should consider expanding into the crypto realm to capitalize on a powerful demographic in 2021.

Start accepting bitcoin payments and consider investing in bitcoin mining as a company to take advantage of this growing industry in the years to come.

Innovate virtual tools to sell online

No matter if you sell physical or digital products or if you’re a service-based business, you can always leverage digital technologies to sell more, engage your customers, and build a powerful brand. The key is to develop virtual solutions that will help your customers decide to get in touch, place an order, or visit your physical store.

This is about innovation and creativity. For example, a popular Australian rug brand MissAmara always had a great website with many high-quality pictures showcasing their products. That might have been enough to push rugs before the pandemic, but now they have come up with their own virtual rug styler that allows people to visualize any rug from the store in their own homes, surrounded by their things, all in a handy little app!

The creativity, the innovation, the customer-centric problem-solving, all of that in a virtual tool that reduces customer effort and inspires people to buy a rug without ever visiting the store. This is just one of many examples in the digital world, but the point for you right now is that you need to be creative and think about what virtual tools your startup can offer to sell more and delight your customers.

Leverage AI and machine learning for contextual experiences

Context is everything nowadays. It’s not just about identifying the customer or knowing what your target demographic looks like; it’s about putting data into context and in the right perspective so that you can make better decisions. Context is what drives hyper-personalization, after all, and investing in contextualized experiences is one of the best ways for your startup to surpass the competition.

While everyone else is acting on basic, gross customer data, your goal should be to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate contextual insights. Collecting and collating vast amounts of customer and market data with AI allows you to act quickly and gain a deeper understanding of the customer.

It also allows you to predict trends and do some accurate forecasting so that you can bring new solutions to the market before everyone else. And, if there’s anything the customers love nowadays, it’s a brand that anticipates their needs.

Focusing on brand values and experiences

Speaking of branding, notice that every successful company in the world has a unique brand identity. The brand might not be innovative, it might not bring anything new to the table, but it is powerful and memorable. If you want your startup to achieve better results in 2021, one of your top priorities should be investing in the brand-building process.

You can start by creating a comprehensive brand wheel, detailing the brand’s essence, personality, vision and values, visuals, and much more. Focus on impacting your visual identity but invest heavily in quality content creation and website copywriting to reel in your audience.

A mix of storytelling with functional and relevant information is the way to spark the right emotional response. Once you have a powerful brand in place, you will have a much easier time standing out in a competitive industry, rising above a sea of competitors that all look and sound similar.

Building an omnichannel structure

Last but definitely not least, no startup can hope to succeed nowadays without an omnichannel approach to sales, marketing, and support. We’re not talking about multichannel here, because that’s where most startups end up – having a presence on a couple of online channels, never really delivering a tailored experience.

No, omnichannel is about optimizing the customer’s experience across all digital touchpoints. It’s about creating a seamless experience and ensuring brand consistency across the board. Whether people are buying or looking for support and guidance, or if they are comparing their options and reading through your content, you need to deliver a consistent message and brand identity on every channel.

Again, leverage customer data to achieve this type of consistency and eliminate any department silos in your startup. For an omnichannel structure to work, your departments need to work together towards common, overarching goals.

Of course, this is impossible without the right tech. So, consider investing in an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system to manage all resources on a centralized platform, and use cloud-based collaboration and communication tools to empower your employees to work together and build an efficient omnichannel structure.

Over to you

Launching a startup during a pandemic can be daunting, but when is it not? You have the opportunity to ensure continuous growth and success right now, but only if you invest in the right tools and make the right managerial decisions.

Image Credit: rodnae productions; pexels; thank you!

Marie Nieves

Marie Nieves has been a regular writer for High Style Life since 2015 and had some guest posts on other blogs in the meantime. Right now, she is taking a break from writing about lifestyle themes, and writing more about business (supported with a degree in business management). Marie is passionate about economy, HR, personal and professional development.