Pivoting in the Pandemic – When pregnant women were told to stay home
The global Covid-19 pandemic has forced the majority of businesses old and new to shift their approach and The Maternity Collective was no different. When the prime minster announced pregnant women as in the ‘moderate risk’ category and advised them to stay home, we were left with the prospect of a reasonably newly formed company being dead before it even started.
Looking back just over 12 months later, it is incredible to see the opportunities the pandemic has provided us with and how Covid-19 has rocketed us from being a small Devon- based company to one of the UK’s leading antenatal course brands.
As a group of NHS healthcare professionals offering expert-led antenatal classes in Devon, we felt comfortable with our product and standing in the market but being forced to change both our perception and reality of what expectant parents wanted and could access has been a turning point for us and a journey we hope to continue. Here I have discussed the three key factors that have enabled us to pivot so successfully during this challenging time that any small business hoping to maximise their online presence can use both now and in the future.
Tip 1 : Maximise your USP
One of the biggest challenges was the realisation we were now competing with every other antenatal provider in the country and what can initially be seen as a positive; access to a wider target audience, does offer the same negative; your target market is offered to everyone else. In this situation we chose to focus heavily on our own unique selling point and although normally we have multiple reasons why we are a superior product/brand – in an instantly crowed market we felt monopolising on the fact that we were all qualified and practicing NHS professionals was the best way to draw attention to us and away from our competitors.
This was incredibly successful, and we rapidly realised there were very few to none other providers with the same level of expertise as we had. We knew this was the case in our local area, however, hadn’t ever extrapolated this or considered how we sat on a national scale. By ensuring our marketing emphasised this at all points in the consumer journey and the reason why our knowledge and expertise were superior to other courses, we were able to become a source of reassurance and reliability that attracted customers towards us and away from others.
Tip 2 : Don’t forget your core purpose
Meeting other expectant parents in your local area is one of the prime benefits and reasons couples undertake antenatal classes. Pregnancy, particularly for first time parents, is a time of huge uncertainty and knowing that you are not alone and being able to meet other parents at the same stage of life can be hugely beneficial both during pregnancy and in the period after birth.
Not being able to meet in groups or offer this type of support during the pandemic caused us to initially question our entire purpose and scope with the temptation to pause activity completely until we were permitted to continue again as normal. We realised that if we were to shift online, addressing this issue needed to be one of our primary concerns and therefore we decided to create an online space where couples who have undertaken our online course could meet and find other parents in their local area. This was crucial in maintaining this key aspect of our purpose that may traditionally be lost in an online course. Other, more established, online providers have never offered this as part of their courses as this isn’t one of their key/usual features, so including this option, alongside our course content seemed to work well for parents and offer a safe space that would have otherwise been unavailable to them.
Tip 3 : Ensure your online product is high quality
Making the decision to offer an online course was hard enough but deciding in what format or how to ensure suitability and ease of use was another. The initial temptation for simplicity and cost purposes was to record a Live session in the same format as previously and enable parents to watch that back, but this felt like a ‘temporary’ solution and one that wouldn’t have a place once restrictions were lifted. We made the difficult decision to invest significant money in creating a purpose-built online resource.
Filmed and produced professionally to ensure the highest quality and specifically designed only for the online market we created a resource of pre-recorded videos covering the entire pregnancy to postnatal period. This would enable us to continue to offer a high-quality product after the pandemic that would maintain our presence in the online space at national level. This was the best decision we made, with parents feeling like they were accessing a dedicated resource, rather than a ‘Covid-19 substitute’. This purpose-built online course was so well received, it went on the win the Gold Made of Mums Award for Best Parenting and Pregnancy Product. We are so pleased with the feedback and response to the online course, we have added additional products to the range and have plans to continue developing and maintaining our online presence after the pandemic has passed.
We would never have considered these changes if the pandemic hadn’t happened but would encourage anyone to challenge themselves to embrace new opportunities that you might never think are possible or worthwhile.
