small business marketing trends 2021

5 Small Business Marketing Trends You Need To Know About

  • On : June 30, 2021

Small businesses are faced with limited resources and are often up against significantly larger competitors. In order to reach your audience at the right time, it is very important to regularly keep your finger on the pulse of fluctuating marketing trends. In fact, regularly researching marketing trends should be a big part of the overall market strategy of your small business! Here are some of the most important trends influencing the market for small businesses currently.

  • Social media

Social media marketing remains an effective and affordable way for small businesses to reel in new customers. It also helps your business to build strong relationships with existing customers continuously, over time. Small businesses should place special attention on producing high-value content that increases engagement, rather than simply bombarding their followers. That said, small businesses should be actively engaging with their followers online, on a regular basis, in as many ways as possible. Your business should customize content to suit each individual social media platform specifically, but the messaging should remain consistent across all platforms. It is also very important that small businesses regularly check whether their social media is in alignment with their overall marketing strategy.

  • Marketing automation

Marketing automation is currently intelligent enough to adjust messaging based on overall intent signals, but it needs machine learning and artificial intelligence to make that possible. Machine learning systems and artificial intelligence are switching from being fanciful, out-of-reach concepts, to being properly integrated by many small businesses as part of their marketing campaigns. Marketing automation allows small businesses to tailor and filter their campaign messaging in order to reach the right audiences. Marketing automation also gives small businesses the capacity to have a set of tools that simplify some of their most time-consuming responsibilities, such as replying to specific customer queries, through the use of ‘chat bots’.

  • Local SEO

Statistics consistently highlight the importance of local SEO when it comes to marketing your business online. This process allows your business to optimize itself and improve overall visibility in local search engines on Google. In fact, 86% of people are said to use Google Maps to look up the location of a business. Harnessing local leads is very important because the vast majority of web users will actively seek products and services in their local area. Your small business could therefore lose potential customers if you do not take advantage of your local SEO. This is especially important for small businesses because most will likely only be operating from a single location. If you are able to optimize your small business for local search results it can be an optimum way in which to improve your local traffic and increase sales.

  • Send review requests

Reviews are incredibly important, especially to new and evolving small businesses. If your business has a lack of online reviews, it might actually deter potential customers. The more reviews you can generate over time the better, as it demonstrates that your business is properly established and can be truly trusted. Encourage customers to write reviews by sending them requests via text, email or by posting reminder requests on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Your customers should be encouraged to complete a review straight after using your products or services but remember that customers in this day and age have short attention spans: so, make sure that the format of your review request is simple to understand and not overwhelming for them to complete.

It can also be beneficial for your small business to collect some of the best customer reviews you receive and highlight them as a feature on your website.

  • Respond personally to all customer reviews

Many small businesses forget to respond to their customer reviews, or they simply don’t do so in a timely manner. There are multiple benefits for any small business when it comes to responding to reviews. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review found that businesses who regularly respond to their customer reviews actually generate more reviews in the future, and witness improved overall ratings. It also can potentially enhance customer loyalty.

It is especially important for your business to respond quickly to any negative reviews that might be circulating online, as it might provide you with the opportunity to minimize any collateral damage. Responding to reviews has been proven to encourage your business to rank higher in search engines, and therefore help boost your SEO. If you can regularly monitor the complaints and suggestions of your customers it will help give you an overall insight into the needs of your target market and allow you to finely tune your market strategy in the most effective way possible.

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