Cultivating Customer Community with 1:1 Relationships

Today’s guest is Ahmed Zedan. He is a co-founder of Haute Hijab, a leading Modest Fashion brand and community that empowers women through leadership and community engagement. Before focusing full-time on Haute Hijab, he served as VP of Marketing of an online fashion marketplace.

Each member of the Haute Hijab team has a spirit produce, so Ahmed explains what this means and how he determined his. He talks further about the culture at his company and why he is passionate about maintaining authenticity. We are then provided with examples of industries that have several companies that are not authentic.

Having grown the business greatly since its inception, Ahmed is asked to explain how marketing was approached in the beginning compared to what it looks like now. The business focused on free forms of marketing initially, which were successful because of Ahmed’s knowledge of digital marketing. Ahmed created a closed Facebook group just for the company’s customers, and Michael asks for the thought process that went into this. The also discuss the important of using other types of social media, including Instagram, to cultivate one-on-one relationships with their customers. 

Ahmed reveals some marketing methods that Haute Hijab has tried that did not find success. He shares a story about a Valentine’s Day campaign that they ran which caused some criticism from customers because of their religion.

Ahmed is very experienced in digital marketing, both as a consultant and now with his own brand. We learn about how his perception of marketing changed as his career progressed. After, Ahmed expresses his belief that research is extremely important before even experimenting with marketing. He then provides an example of a change that the company made after some research.