Ben Ho is an entrepreneur who has co-founded yesloyal, a marketing and loyalty software platform. The company was started to help small business owners attract and retain more customers.
Ben’s professional background was in corporate, where he spent his time launching innovative products and services to new markets. It was during this experience that the hunger grew to leave the corporate space and partner with his brother Hogan to build something meaningful together, something of their own that could start local and scale Global.
Four and a half years have been spent to build yesloyal. The company is comprised of a very talented team who are united by the mission of building an amazing yet simple software to help small businesses grow. yesloyal officially launched during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TV1 News recently caught up with Ben to discuss his journey in the industry and here’s what went down:
What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your business?
First and foremost I am listening to our customers and taking action on their immediate needs. We aren’t doing any guesswork when it comes to our customer’s immediate needs, we simply ask them.
In addition to this, the team and I spend considerable time looking at how COVID is impacting macro-level trends.
We combine these two approaches to build out our software development roadmap. This roadmap is part of our growth driver and our goal is to ensure our yesloyal for business (merchant) app and yesloyal customer app continues to deliver massive and meaningful value to its users.
What form of marketing has worked well for your business throughout the years?
We have a widespread of marketing approaches however, telemarketing is working best for yesloyal at the moment. The company benefits from the ability to quickly understand why people are saying yes and also why people are saying no. This form of marketing also allows us to quickly fine-tune our unique value proposition.
Telemarketing gives us the ability to narrow in on different industries very quickly and accumulate learnings instantaneously. No other form of marketing gives us the same two-way dialogue, results, speed, and ability to obtain time-relevant quantitative plus qualitative feedback.
What social media platforms do you usually use to increase your brand’s awareness?
We are active on Facebook, with a sprinkle of Instagram and we are starting to lean into producing more video-based content to increase our brand awareness.
People really want to know who they are working with and so we are starting to give more focus to story-based content that shows why we do what we do.
What is the toughest decision you had to make in the last few months?
Every company at some stage will get tempted with big opportunities that don’t completely align with the mission of the company.
We’ve had a few temptations over the last months.
The toughest decision for my brother and I has been to say no to shiny new business outside of our core focus.
The toughest decision is to stay on course with our plans, even if it’s at the expense of short-term revenue gains.
How has your business been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?
The pandemic has affected the way we had set up our business, everything from our product, operations, staffing, and business model.
Two big impacts to the business are the lockdowns and working remotely. This places immense strain on team meetings and our ability to visit small business owners to demonstrate our solutions.
How have you adapted your business operations in response to COVID-19 and its associated impacts?
We have increased the regularity of our team meetings and we are doing this virtually over video on a daily basis.
We keep a watchful eye on the latest changes from the Government any how this will affect ourselves and small business owners.
We have also double-downed on new software and implemented new processes across our business.
What have been some of the most important lessons you have learned because of this pandemic?
The team and I have learned that the majority of small business owners are tough, full of fight,s and very resilient.
We’ve learned and seen so much truth in Eisenhower’s quote “I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” The plans we had in the business could never have predicted this pandemic, but the rigours of planning itself made us think through what actions the business would take during the bad times, however it manifests itself.
In addition to this, we’ve learned to place a higher focus on mental wellness for our teams, our suppliers, and also our customers. We constantly need to remind ourselves that people are doing it tough right now and we need to be even more accomodating and supportive.
What do you hope to see happen in the near future for small businesses all over the world?
We hope to see small businesses bounce back whilst avoiding the pitfall of making rash decisions for short-term gains. An example of unsustainable short-term gains is very heavy discounting, cutting corners, sacrificing quality, or taking on bad customers.
We hope to see small businesses survive and thrive whilst having a strategy in place to recognise, reward, and motivate repeat business from their existing loyal customer base.
We want the small business sector to experience a major recovery and come back strong and better than ever.
What advice would you give to a newbie Entrepreneur setting up a new business in this pandemic?
Ensure you know what problem you are solving for your target customer, don’t focus just on the product, remember to tell your unique story.
Ensure you have a strong online presence and continually seek constructive feedback from the people you seek to serve.
In addition, remember that a business is about getting and keeping customers, so ensure you have a strategy in place for both.
