The advancements in digital marketing are rapidly increasing on a daily basis. The significance of these trends is now so great that any small business that wants to improve their revenue should incorporate them into their operations.
Importance of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
There is no doubt that digital marketing is an utter necessity for small businesses to increase their customer base and enhance their brand visibility. By engaging in strategic digital marketing and utilizing the most current digital marketing practices, small businesses can learn the online activities of their patrons. By doing this, they can find the right people and convert them into their customers.
The technology of digital marketing enabled a higher amount of customization in marketing techniques. In the past, the same promotional materials were broadcast to everyone, regardless of their individual interests. Digital marketing demonstrated the necessity of having tailored methods that are specifically attractive to different groups of people. And that’s precisely why a small business needs it
It is undeniable that an effective digital marketing plan provides small companies with more sales and assists them in growing their business. The ultimate aim of the small business is to see an increase in both revenue and reputation, and this is what they eventually achieve.
1. Artificial Intelligence
AI is definitely one of the most prominent developments within the field of online marketing currently. Due to its immense popularity, it is highly likely that it will still be a trend in 2022. A few years ago, something that seemed like a wild concept from a work of fiction has become available in the form of useful applications that can be extremely useful to entrepreneurs.
AI can be an immense help in terms of marketing spending and budget allotment decisions as they can help enhance customer targeting, attempt to draw back customers, and also monitor clicks. Furthermore, it offers extraordinary knowledge of customer conduct and exact evidence for improving the accuracy of key decisions, something which is essential for the advancement of small businesses.
These factors provide businesses with a better understanding of who their customers are, where to target them on the internet, and how much money to invest in the process.
It is anticipated that by 2022, AI helpers like Google Duplex will display more sophisticated natural language processing and generation capacities.
These measures will provide the basis for the development of more natural-sounding chatbots so that the person using them will not know that they are actually conversing with a machine.
The implementation of sophisticated robotic technology will decrease the need to hire expensive customer service staff at small and medium businesses. These robots allow for prompt interaction with customers and deliver personalised marketing messages in real time.
2. Voice Search Integrations
If you would like to increase the income of your small venture in the upcoming year, you should take into account voice search integration as one of the digital marketing trends to follow in 2022. The use of verbal queries has been a major factor in the search arena lately. By 2022, digital marketing is certain to evolve significantly due to the shifting method individuals use to search the internet.
Nowadays, companies are encouraged to modify their software, websites, and user interfaces to stay on top of the ever-changing world of voice search.
Evidence from a PwC report shows that the majority (65%) of individuals between the ages of 25 and 49 converse with voice-activated technology on a daily basis. Total worldwide sales of smart speakers have set a new record of 150 million units, and it is expected to grow quickly in the near future. By 2024, Global Market Insights predicts that the sales of intelligent speakers will be over $30 billion.
Voice Search has gained extensive usage in recent times, with users relying on voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant for their online activities.
It is essential for your product, website, or App to be compatible with the Voice Assistant that most or all of your users are using.
3. VR and 360-Degree Content
Organizations such as Facebook are pioneers in terms of what consumers are using, and to achieve this, they try to establish what the most recent technology and interests are headed towards.
Facebook is committing a great deal of resources in the development of Facebook Horizon, which is set to be released in the coming year. This virtual world platform offers a unique experience for users, who can explore, play, and make their own content in an immersive environment.
It is obvious that Oculus, the company that provides this VR Experience, was a fundamental part of their plan when they acquired it.
Thus, it is essential for tech and media companies that focus on entertainment to devise or start creating Virtual Reality Experiences that work with the Oculus VR platform, in order to keep their options open in the future.
Having a variety of virtual reality-ready material at their disposal provides businesses with an edge when VR content begins to gain traction in their industry in 2022.
4. Social Media Management & Automation
It looks like 2022 is going to be extremely competitive for small businesses, because 96% of them are already investing in social media for this year. This technique of digital marketing has become very popular in recent years and is expected to remain so in 2022.
With a greater number of companies utilizing digital channels to obtain customers, the cost for trying to gain someone’s attention (in both labour and advertisement expenses) will become more costly.
This is why many businesses are choosing to utilize social media management platforms, for example SocialBu, that can help to provide reductions in both time and money. Utilizing services like SocialBu can help maintain regularity on social media platforms, in turn resulting in expansion of a business and enhancement of its sales.
Some excellent characteristics of SocialBu are automatically dynamic in Uploading Posts, sourcing Subjects from RSS, and automatically responding to Client Responses and Questions. The extra worth comes from their other capabilities, like Post Reusing, Scheduling Instagram Stories, Team Co-operation and Supervising Social Networking.
Therefore, it is recommended that small businesses should utilize these platforms in 2022 so as to lower their expenses and improve their performance on social media sites.
5. Video-format Content
We can anticipate that by 2022, video-based channels like TikTok will still be popular and the demand for such material will still be prevalent.
Taking into account that the majority of this type of content is viewed on cell phones, experimenting with 18:9 (fullscreen wide for no-edge devices) or 9:16 ratio (vertical-IGTV) could be advantageous in increasing interest in your expansive videos.
According to Forbes, viewers tend to watch Instagram and Facebook Live videos for a time three times longer than recorded videos.
Users are alerted when Live Video is beginning on the pages they follow, which increases their enthusiasm to join the Live Chat and get their questions answered.
By 2022, hence, smaller companies should try using realistic, engaging content by altering the type of video content they post on their pages and measuring the growth of their viewership.
Small Business Marketing Predictions from the Experts
1) Technology and data will empower SMBs to better know their customers, resulting in better marketing strategies and more ROI.“2015 will be the year that small business truly begins using big data to understand its customers, enabling smaller organizations to market more effectively, and to provide richer, more customized experiences. Cloud-based analytics solutions will continue to flatten the cost curve between large and small business, giving the little guys access to many of the same tools the Fortune 500 has.
Small companies will now be able to comprehend the actions of their customers better than ever before, which will result in more exact advertising tactics and a higher yield on investment from digital marketing. It may take some time before small businesses can compete with the larger companies, but having access to mobile, social and web analytics will help to create a more balanced marketing arena than ever before.
Adam Toporek, the founder of CTS Service Solutions, is an active user on Twitter – @adamtoporek. Join in on the trend and tweet his latest message!
2) SMBs integrating across systems will help reduce complexity and increase effectiveness.“A new effort by small business technology companies to network various products — from payroll and accounting to point-of-sale and marketing — will help reduce the complexity across the software stack, creating renewed headroom for growth. It’s starting in back-office, automating some of the more redundant aspects of running a business, but that type of integration will make its way to the point-of-sale and eventually to the marketing and advertising industries as well.
Regarding advertising, these resources provide small businesses with two instant prospects. At first, the growing potential for software companies to construct automated customer relationship management programs is enhanced by the abundant data collected from digital payments, check-out processes, and booking services regarding a business’ clientele. Second, these tools are advantageous to small businesses, especially those in the service area, enabling them to go digital with online reservations and booking engines. This opens up new possibilities for local businesses to utilize effective, result-based advertising methods.
Tweet this trend and follow Steven Jacobs, Street Fight’s Deputy Editor, on Twitter at @stevenhjacobs.
3) Software with service will help SMBs get more out of their digital marketing and technology integrations.“Local businesses are starved for time but still require technology that will help bring success to their business via online marketing. In 2015, we will see what ReachLocal is calling Software with Service take hold over the traditional Software as a Service (SaaS).
This award recognizes that attempting to develop a tech system on their own is not working well for many companies, and they need to take advantage of the latest technology supported by qualified professionals.
Sharon Rowlands, ReachLocal’s CEO, has tweeted about an emerging trend – follow her on Twitter @SharonRowlands.
4) Consumer behavior will drive more SMBs to invest in mobile and differentiate themselves with online scheduling and payments.“If I have to pick one trend, then it remains mobile. Mobile continues to grow in importance for consumers and especially in the local market, which is dominated by SMBs. However, the overall market is growing in complexity, and this is another theme — the challenges of addressing more channels and platforms as consumer behavior becomes ever more convoluted and hard to track.
I believe that, as an extension of mobile technology, people should acknowledge and possibly do something about the growing trend of online appointment scheduling and in-app payments. The companies who offer the convenience of web-based ordering, booking, and in-app payment systems will benefit, whilst those who do not provide these facilities will be left behind. Small to medium-sized businesses typically cannot do these things by themselves, however, there are external directories and platforms available to use for this purpose.
Greg Sterling, the Vice President of Strategy and Insights at the Local Search Association, is someone to pay attention to. Make sure to tweet the current trend and follow him on Twitter – his handle is @gsterling.
5) Mobile marketing will become the new “must-have” for SMBs.“Mobile web marketing will become the most important thing for SMBs to focus on in 2015. Small business owners need to make sure their websites are mobile ready with mobile offers, hours of operation, and click-to-call features. They will also need to focus on mobile-optimized content on their websites.
Texts/SMSs and ads for phones will be more common. Company owners must also implement mobile-oriented social media strategies in order to connect with Millennials, who are a significant target market.
Follow Melinda Emerson from Quintessence Group Consulting and author of ‘Click to Tweet This Trend’ on Twitter @SmallBizLady.
6) Social will be more about paid than organic, forcing SMBs to adapt.“Social media becomes less valuable to small businesses as social platforms continue moving toward less visibility for organic efforts and more focus on paid promotion.
This implies that tactics such as email advertising, creating sales leads, searching online, and creating content will be required to compensate.
Tweet this small business trend as suggested by Anita Campbell, the founder of Small Business Trends, and follow her on Twitter @smallbiztrends.
