Black Owned Business Network (BOBN) was created by a team of African American Entrepreneurs looking for a way to market their goods and services solely online due to the global pandemic. It didn’t come as a surprise that ramping up their online presence was going to take a lot of work since the other major retail (more established) brands were also doing the same. But even with advanced marketing experience, they knew it was going to be an uphill battle.
Since the start of the Pandemic, many Black-Owned Businesses have been forced to permanently close their doors at an alarming rate, and with the increase in online sales activities, we were desperate to ensure our Black-Owned Brands were visible to online consumers, so we could still keep our businesses going by increasing our online sales.
As marketers, we immediately knew that if it was this tough for our small businesses to stand out online, then we knew other small Black-Owned Businesses were probably in the same, or worst position than us since they are primarily focused on being just Business Owners, and don’t fully understand how to increase their online presence (especially if they don’t have the budget for digital marketing strategies).
In order for any of our remaining Black Businesses to survive the unprecedented year we’ve had this year, we have to stick together. We created Black-Owned Business Network (BOBN) so we can have a platform to promote and market other Black-Owned Brands, so we can eventually create a powerful online presence for other Black-Owned Businesses.
We are encouraging every small Black Entrepreneur to sign up to our platform and become a member so we can promote your business. While there has been an increase in the support of buying Black-Owned Brands and other companies listing online directories for Black-Owned Businesses, we are still at a disadvantage if we are not coming up in organic searches.
There are over 50,000 searches for Black-Owned Businesses per month which has skyrocketed since the tragic death of George Floyd with new supporters searching the web, but there are over 3 million searches per day for products and services that some of our Black-Owned Businesses provided. The sad truth is, we cannot sit back and wait for someone to decide to “shop-black” and hope they figure out where to find us.
The world is changing in a way where online shopping is only going to increase, and if Black-Owned Businesses don’t position themselves to capture active customers shopping online every day, then they will continue to miss opportunities to grow their businesses.
Black-Owned Business Network (BOBN) are firm believers that together we can and together we will build bigger Black-Owned Brands and secure a reputable position in the online retail market space. Our goal is to help our members work their way into some of the biggest retail chains in the country, but in order to get there, we must get their products into the hands of online buyers so we can grow our customer base.
Even with the public outcries and protests that emerged in 2020, it will still take time to recover from the global pandemic and years and years of institutionalized racism. Until then, group efforts and building communities are the only way to survive in this economy. Let’s turn a new leaf this year and give your business the push it needs in the direction of success.
