Yes, it’s still summer, but it’s an excellent time to get ready for small business success in 2022. July marks the halfway point in the calendar year. You’re probably already brainstorming on your 2022 marketing strategies. So let’s jump in and talk about at least 11 easy things you can do now to get ahead of 2022 trends and predictions.
Develop Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies
Google announced it would end support to third-party cookies in the Chrome browser next year, but the tech giant postponed this move to 2023. Chrome is the most popular browser—almost 70% of the market share, so this development is worth your attention.
The football could get kicked down the road another year. However, security concerns about data breaches and other kinds of identity theft make it likely that we’ll see an end to cookies. Nevertheless, now is an excellent time to position yourself for small business success in 2022 by lessening your reliance on cookies-based targeting data. Of course, you’ll need to be more creative and invest a bit more time understanding your audience, but life will continue without cookies.
What are some easy things to do?
- Make greater use of CRM (customer relationship management) (or download CRM software now and get started). CRM is a tool that helps you deepen your relationship with your customers and improve your conversions. CRMs help you centralize essential data, such as customers, prospects, history of interactions, and social tracking.
- Create surveys, contests, and other types of interactive content to acquire deeper insights into your consumer audience. Interactive content such as contests and Q&A is viral on social media channels. As a result, you can build a gold mine of data that will help you personalize your marketing message.
Take Ownership Over Your Audience
Social media algorithms and metrics affect the delivery of your messages. Your audience may never see or hear what you’re saying through the tremendous amount of digital noise:
- More than 500 million daily tweets
- 6 million businesses running ads and promos on Facebook
Not only is there more content on the internet, but consumers are starting to go out again, diminishing screen time. As a result, they prioritize how much time they spend on digital platforms and what kind of content they want to consume. In addition, their expectations are increasing. Combine these realities with the fact that today’s consumer attention span is only a few seconds. Therefore, for small business success in 2022, you need to develop more control over your consumer audience.
What are some easy things to do?
- Enhance your newsletter and email delivery. These communications go straight to your audience’s inbox.
- Personalization will continue to be one of the essential digital marketing tools in the coming years.
- Take advantage of psychographic data and other tools to build segmented audiences.
- You’ll increase your open rate if your emails and newsletters are customized and speak to your audience personally.
Throw Out the Box
As we’ve said many times, the digital space is becoming more and more crowded. It’s not going to be easy to break through all the noise to reach your consumers’ attention. As Deepak Chopra said, “instead of thinking outside the box, get rid of the box.”
Small business success in 2022 requires that you explore and implement novel strategies, constantly monitor what’s working and what’s slowing you down, and launch unconventional ways to market your brand.
What are some easy things to do?
- Jump on TikTok, Clubhouse, or less conventional social media platforms.
- Develop relationships with influencers.
- Partner with other businesses.
- Mix up your content to reach a larger audience. Everyone has a different learning style, and your consumers have different content tastes. So produce videos, lists, infographics, podcasts, masterclasses, and livestream events.
- Lower the flame on self-promotion and focus on the needs of your consumers.
For Business Success in 2022, Make Your Brand Image Snack-Size
Can your consumer easily convey to someone else what your brand is all about? Remember, word of mouth is still the best way to grow your brand, even if those conversations occur in text messages or social media comments.
What are some easy things to do?
- Create a brand identity that is authentic, clear, and easy to share.
- Think about the words you use to describe your products and services, and remember to focus on your target audience’s concerns, needs, and interests.
Produce Storytelling Content
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, you’ll expand your reach by producing impactful storytelling content. Shift the focus from “my product or service is amazing” to stories of how your product or service has helped a consumer, community, or the world.
What are some easy things to do?
- Post more user-generated content (UGC). For example, ask your consumers to write short stories about how your service or product impacts them to post on their Instagram or Facebook pages.
- Post videos that demonstrate your product or service in use and its impact on your customers’ productivity, health, or lifestyle objectives.
- Storytelling is an excellent format for showcasing your social responsibility projects too.
Take Advantage of the Hybrid Matrix
The pandemic year was brutal on small businesses, especially retailers and restaurants. However, those who survived were able to pivot and adapt by bringing their business model online quickly.
- Virtual events took the place of in-store events.
- Consumers increased their use of digital platforms to access online shopping.
- Appointments, classes, and workouts moved to Zoom and other online platforms.
Now, as the pandemic somewhat slows down, consumers are anxious to get out and enjoy in-person events once again. But safety concerns linger, so not everyone will be so anxious to get off their digital devices and come to your office or store.
Small business success in 2022 will require adaptation to a hybrid model, where you return to hosting in-person events but offer a registration option to join the event online.
You may want to boost your investment in AR and AI technologies, too, to make the digital experience as robust as possible for those who are worried about socializing.
Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Establishing yourself as a thought leader is an impactful way to get your brand name out in the crowded digital world without advertising. It builds brand authenticity and builds trust between you and your consumers while providing them something engaging and helpful to share with their friends. In addition, if you are consistent, you’ll become the go-to source for the latest news, updates, and opinions on issues that are of critical concern to them.
What are some easy things to do?
- Open a blog page on your website.
- Establish a consistent schedule for publishing thoughtful articles on topics that relate to your industry or the concerns of your audience.
- Publish on LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, and other platforms that increase your exposure and reputation.
- Start a podcast or host masterclasses or webinars.
- Join Clubhouse and start hosing chat rooms.
Optimize Your Brand Vision and Mission
Across the spectrum, from investors to shoppers, people are looking to do business with mission-driven companies. All indicators point to an increase in this reality.
What are some easy things to do?
- As you develop your 2022 marketing plan, be sure to include strategies that optimize and amplify your brand vision and mission. It’s not enough to simply explain what your product does or how your service works. Instead, it would help if you talked about why you’re doing what you do; how do you want to transform the world.
- You might also want to consider aligning with non-profits that match your social responsibility goals. This partnership could help both of you.
- Take time away from marketing to post content that showcases your vision and mission. For example, you can share videos from NGOs that are engaged in projects related to your purpose. Or videos of you or your team involved in community volunteer projects.
Take Advantage of Artificial Intelligence Technology for Small Business Success in 2022
Using AI technologies in your marketing should not be put on your bucket list of things to do later. Artificial intelligence helps you
- automate tasks
- analyze consumer information and identify search patterns
- personalize emails
- complete e-commerce transactions
- generate keywords for your content and brand messaging
- personalize interactions with your customers (can recommend services and products to your customers based on previous purchases, inquiries, website visits).
AI also enables you to engage in conversational marketing, a technique that will put you ahead of your competitors. For example, you can engage in one-on-one conversations and respond to customer feedback in a way that makes your consumer feel heard. In addition, AI technologies shorten your response time since the customer doesn’t need to wait for an email to be received and then for you to respond. As a result, customers will feel that you genuinely care about their opinions and feedback and are ready to take corrective action.
The use of artificial intelligence by small businesses is a growing trend. If you want to experience small business success in 2022, it would be an excellent idea to spend the rest of this year learning how to take advantage of this cutting-edge technology.
Optimize All Your Content for Voice Search to Enjoy Small Business Success in 2022
With the growth in smart speakers and other voice-activated devices, voice search will ultimately outpace written search inquiries, especially for those active and on the go. As voice search technology becomes more sophisticated, you must take steps to ensure all the content on your website site, and blog is voice optimized.
Content Marketing Will Continue to Dominate, But Your Articles Need to be Longer
It doesn’t matter what product you sell or the service you provide; you can write engaging articles for your website blog that not only create awareness but provide the reader with useful information that helps them make a purchase or appointment.
For instance, let’s say you sell jewelry. Then, you can write engaging blog articles about the stones and gems used to make jewelry, jewelry in different countries, the evolution of jewelry production, and so forth.
You can even bring in social justice issues, such as actions taken to improve gem mining conditions, laws against slave and child labor, and the economic benefits of gem mines in developing countries.
One thing that is changing, though, is word length. Previously a 500-word blog article would net you good results; however, the new Google algorithms favor longer pieces. So today, you’ll need to write a blog article of roughly 2,000 words to rank higher Google’s SERPs.
All your readers won’t have the time to consume lengthy articles. One way to meet the needs of everyone is to produce a video that summarizes your article’s major points for those short on time. Embed it at the beginning or in the middle of your blog article. Additionally, videos on your blog article keep your readers engaged on that page longer, which also helps improve your SERPs.
Bottom Line
As the digital marketplace becomes more crowded, you’ll find it more challenging to reach your audience. Take advantage of these summer months to implement winning marketing strategies that will bring you small business success in 2022. Even if you have a small team and budget, there are easy things you can do now to improve your competitiveness.
- Be daring and creative
- utilize digital technologies
- automate
- personalize
- be authentic
- tell your story and
- own your audience.
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