Today we have selected Kaylee Blubaugh To to take her Interview. She is The Founder Of Blu Insight.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
Although things are still very different than they were prior to Covid-19, we are doing well and working harder than ever to keep our clients and their businesses prosperous.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded this company?
After many years holding marketing director roles for individual companies, I always had a desire to make more of an impact with marketing and found myself continually picking up freelance marketing jobs on the side of my full-time positions. Soon, the flexibility and success of these freelance jobs quickly overpowered my fear of losing a stable income, and I decided to start my own business. Once I opted to move away from the typical nine-to-five job, I was able to help several other entrepreneurs and small businesses build up their ventures, and Blu Insight was born.
How does your company innovate?
Blu Insight works with a variety of industries and offers individualized solutions for their marketing and advertising needs. This gives us the ability to use experience across different industries to tailor strategies from one vertical to another.
We also understand that budgets are extremely vital for startups and small businesses and strive to find that “sweet spot” where our services are both valuable and won’t break the bank!
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your business, and how are you coping?
Prior to Covid-19, we were growing at a rapid rate. In fact, we were growing so fast that we were actually turning away clients while we worked on scaling our operations.
Once the pandemic began, there was a wide range of shutdowns. Unfortunately, many of our clients at the time were those affected the most. All of our restaurant, yoga studio, and dentist clients were forced to shut down their businesses for a period of time. As a consequence of these unfortunate circumstances, these clients were unable to gain any revenue and had no services to promote at the time, dwindling their marketing budgets to nothing.
The morning the shutdowns were announced for Texas, our phones began ringing off the hook with panicked clients. We lost roughly 60% of our recurring revenue in one day.
Fortunately, in the following weeks, the technology industry flourished as more and more clients came to us with business opportunities that arose due to a rise in remote working, distant education, and the transition of many aspects of our lives to the digital form.
Shortly following that, our restaurant clients made the decision to remain open but shift their focus to takeout orders. These restaurants were not built for takeout, but rather of an atmosphere-based nature, so increased exposure and marketing were necessary!
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
I wouldn’t consider this a difficult choice necessarily, but, we did make the choice to lower our pricing for industries that were facing extreme financial challenges. This was difficult in the sense of our own financial stability but it was an easy choice overall because we felt for these clients and the immense stress they were under. We were happy to cut them a break when they needed it and it has, in turn, strengthened our relationship with them.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
Like most, we are relying heavily on online tools like Zoom for video calls and Slack for day-to-day communication.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Our concern is not so much about our competitors as much as we’re concerned that we can continue to provide good value to our clients as we scale. If a client finds that they can get better value and care from another marketing agency, we will take that as a learning experience to determine how we can do better.
Your Final Thoughts
We hope that all small businesses continue to support one another as we continue to face these difficult times and focus more on building long-term relationships instead of focusing solely on short-term financial goals.
- Spokesperson: Kaylee Blubaugh
- Company: Blu Insight
- Website: www.bluinsight