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4 Digital Strategies To Watch If You're a Small Business Looking for Big Growth

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E-commerce has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, with the rise of more personalized, convenient, and engaging ways of shopping. eMarketer estimates that e-commerce sales will reach $6.39 trillion by 2024. However, the question remains: What's next for online retail innovation?

To get some answers, we turned to Karen Behnke, beauty industry veteran, expert in sustainability, and founder of Juice Beauty. In a recent interview on WorkParty, Behnke shared her insights on the future of e-commerce, and why she see’s it as one that's driven by personalized experiences and technology that enhances the customer journey.

Ahead, she highlights four emerging strategies that she believes will be game-changers for small businesses looking to drive growth.

1. Live shopping

Live shopping combines the power of video with the engagement of a live event to build deeper connections with customers and drive sales in competitive marketplaces. It's also a great way to build excitement while assessing interest and taking feedback in real time.

Recently Juice Beauty dipped its toe into live shopping by partnerning with Reach TV, the largest in-airport TV network, to launch a new shoppable video series titled Beauty on the Fly and featuring guests like Kate Hudson. "The early results look good," Behnke says. "It is driving traffic, and it's only been running for barely a month."

2. Artificial intelligence

AI-powered tools can help personalize the customer experience, automate repetitive tasks, and help business owners gain valuable insights into customer behavior. Juice Beauty recently upgraded to Shopify 2.0 to start working with new technologies like AI. "It was a big deal for us and our digital team,” says Behnke. “The capabilities for our customers are so much more rich.”

3. Video

Behkne also sees video as a tool that should be used across all channels to make content more engaging and informative. She believes video is the best way to showcase products and brand personality in ways that text or images can't do alone.

4. Digital partnerships

Juice Beauty launched 17 years ago as a retail-only brand focused on in-store activations. Today, its products are available on Amazon Luxury, Ulta.com, as well as Sephora.ca. And Behkne says brand partnerships like these with retail stores that have strong digital capabilities proved to be a smart way to expand reach and tap into new markets.

"Juice Beauty has been a [brick-and-mortar] retail brand from inception, so it was a little bit harder," says Behnke. "But, we're talking with our major retail partners about everything digital. Our team is doing a great job of moving more and more into the space."

Discover more small business technology solutions and digital beauty marketing tips by tuning into this week's episode of WorkParty.

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