Small Business Marketing Trends

With 2020 being a volatile year for businesses and especially marketers thanks to COVID-19, everyone has had to make huge adjustments to their original plans. However, with a few vaccines making their way around the corner, there is hope for more economic growth in 2021. 

Since 2021 is quickly approaching, small business owners should be preparing for the unique opportunities that will arise. This includes a brand new marketing plan to go along with the trends that are projected to dominate the new year. Some of the marketing trends for 2021 include local SEO, voice search, social media marketing, and interactive content. 

If you’re not sure where to start, keep reading because these industry trends just might be the best bang for your marketing buck!

Local SEO

Having a geographically defined service area is imperative to your company’s local success. With local listings, this will help your business show up in “near me” results. 

For example, if you’ve ever searched for Adidas, not only will you get their website, but you will also be shown a list of nearby stores that either sell the Adidas brand or nearby Adidas stores themselves. Search engines prioritize relevance to its user based on intent and algorithm. 

And with geographical locations, users are more likely to buy thus making it easier to convert them into paying customers.

Voice Search

If you own a smartphone, have you ever asked it to help you find information? For example, “Hey Siri, where’s the closest grocery store?” Then Siri would proceed to give you the closest options. 

With technology getting better every year, voice search is also always improving. From a business perspective, voice search is becoming more important as people seek information in various ways. Along with having an SEO strategy, you’re going to need a voice strategy as well. 

First, understand your audience – this is always going to be true regardless of what kind of marketing tactic you’re trying to do. Then you’ll need to understand the user experience, meaning you need to understand how people use voice search. When it comes to SEO (and depending on your area of expertise of course), you’re always wanting to rank for the best search terms. 

Let’s say you’re in the skincare industry and you currently rank for search terms such as “facial cleansers”, with voice search you want to focus on answering a question may have regarding facial cleansers. An example would be “what facial cleansers are good for oily skin?” This can be tailored to your specific skin type and your brand or product. 

Social Media Marketing

If your brand isn’t on social media, what are you doing?! You’re missing out on new potential customers. If you’re worried about your budget, social media marketing can cost as little as $0 (make use of hashtags and SEO to grow organically!) to a couple of hundred dollars a month. Create a content plan, post regularly, and keep your audience engaged to retain them. 

Did you know that social media marketing budget spending grew from 13.3% in February to almost 23.2% in June? Thanks to the coronavirus, retaining customers has become much more important than getting new ones. And with 2021 coming up, this marketing trend will continue to flourish as people spend more time being online searching for products, brands, and even organizations.

Interactive content

Interactive content on your website or social media posts isn’t completely new but is more recently being seen as important. With interactive content, visitors are able to be more engaged with your content and brand, learn more about you, and enjoy your brand as well. 

This offers value to visitors while helping you learn more about them based on data entered from the interactive content. This info could help refine personas and targeting. 

Not sure where to start on interactive content? You start with assessments, polls, interactive videos, contests, and more! Incentives are almost always a surefire way to get people excited to share your content and could lead to a domino effect.

Conclusion

Due to all the recent events in the world, your marketing plans may have been flipped upside down just like millions of other people – forcing you to make more business exchanges & communication online. Regardless of how your business did in 2020, you can’t afford to be left behind so start thriving in 2021 with these upcoming marketing trends.  

Let us know below if you have other practical ways to incorporate any of these trends. And if you need help, don’t hesitate to ask!