Developing relationships

To Move Your Business Forward

Relationships are the core of our business’ success. Meaningful engagement and earned trust are the foundations of what we hope will be long-lasting relationships, as our core value at healthybud is community. Without it, we simply would not grow or survive!

I will be sharing 3 sectors of healthybud that are crucial to our business and would not exist without having nurtured and developed strong relationships.

developed new features that make cross-promoting easy and effective). From our experience, that kind of outreach and gesture has gone a long way with our partners. A more timeless approach is sending handwritten, personalized cards and sending small gifts during holidays. There are countless ways to be thoughtful and to show appreciation, but we always found that the most simple but genuine gestures are the most effective. Showing your partners you care goes a long way when building, developing and maintaining relationships.

Community

The online community we have built and continue to grow (a.k.a. the #healthygang) is an essential and core part of our brand. Connecting with other likeminded, health-conscious pet parents striving to create the best life for their pet through nutrition, education, and community is exactly what we are about. Their feedback and engagement help drive our company’s direction and incorporate their input and insight into our company developments. But building an online community today is no small task. After growing our following to 6000 in 1 year, here are some tips I can share about community building and maintenance:

Provide value: ‘followers’ will easily fall off the track if all you do as a company is talk about yourself (your product, your achievements, your launches, etcetera.) Finding a way to ensure that your community is part of your narrative is so important when building and maintaining that dynamic. One great way to do that is by providing them with value. In our case, that is educational content that they can incorporate into their day-to-day lives as pet parents. We show our community that we care about them and their wellbeing by providing them with tips and information through conversational posts, encouraging them to join the conversation. Whatever your business is, find out what you can offer your community (besides your product offering) at no charge.

Engage: This is key today - I like to think of modern online engagement like social currency (a ‘like’ being valued at the lowest end - let us say $1, a comment at $10, a repost at $20, and an actual personal private DM conversation is priceless - when done tactfully). The entire world is online today, which makes cutting through the noise and getting noticed all the more difficult. It is easy to forget that accounts have real people behind them, but remember that real people like to be engaged with, feel noticed, appreciated, etcetera. Take the time to communicate with your customers/ following (it’s called social media for a reason!) If you have an email list, use it (again, mindfully and without spamming, of course). The time you take to do these small actions will go a long way and surely help move your business forward.

Get creative: We have built our own ambassadors program, where we have onboarded a handful of pet parents in North America to be part of our first ambassador community. In this private Facebook group, we make sure to communicate and show them how instrumental they are to our business, and that we consider them as part of the team. We provide them with support when needed, 1-on-1 calls, bi-monthly zoom meetings to talk about all things pet parenting and get their input and advice, share information that has not been released to the public yet, etcetera.

All these gestures can get you well on your way to developing lasting relationships, but the rule of thumb is to engage with people the way you would want to be engaged with. Meaningful relationships are not born overnight - it takes time, but it is well worth the investment.

“DANA BEN DAVID IS A CO- FOUNDER OF HEALTHYBUD, A CANADIAN STARTUP IN

THE PET SPACE.

THEIR MISSION IS TO MAKE PET PARENTING SIMPLER THROUGH POWERFUL & PURPOSEFUL NUTRITION, EDUCATION AND A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY. DANA’S

ROLE ENCOMPASSES SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING, BRANDING AND COMMUNITY

MANAGEMENT.” https:// healthybud. co/