Small businesses are undergoing significant changes in 2021 and will undergo more significant changes in 2022. Business owners are now considering a focused digital transformation that incorporates the best of what we learned in 2021 to help them become more agile in the future.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not been kind to small business owners, and that’s something of an understatement. Employers are struggling to hire workers, and productivity has fallen in many service-oriented industries.

Customers had no choice but to become increasingly digital-first in all facets of their life. Customer behaviors changed, expectations evolved, and so did their preferences and values.

Consistent improvements to enhance your business are critical for its success and sustainability. Small businesses now face new challenges going into 2022 following pandemic-related massive shutdowns, changes to operations, and even complete overhauls of cherished small businesses.

How can we predict the future after such an unpredictable year?

Read on for our in-depth look at the major things every small business owner should worry about heading into 2022

#1. Not Building a Social Media Brand.

Social media for business is no longer optional. It’s a must-have for reaching out to customers, gaining useful insights, and expanding your business. Consider that there are now more than 4.2 billion active social media users across the globe.

If you’re not taking advantage of social within your digital marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to reach almost half the world’s population.

Benefits of social media for brand building

1. Increase brand awareness

With over half of the world’s population using social media, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok are the natural places to reach new and highly targeted potential customers.

Think people only connect with brands they already know on social media? Consider that 83 percent of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform.

2. Humanize your brand

The ability to create real human connections is one of the key benefits of social media for business. Introduce your followers to the people who make up your company and showcase how existing customers are using and benefiting from your products.

Authenticity builds trust. Trust, in turn, builds marketing receptiveness and drives new business. And social is the best place to get real!

3. Stay top of mind

Seventy percent of social media users log into their accounts at least once per day, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center, and many people (49 percent) admit to checking social multiple times per day.

Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with fans and followers every time they log in. Keep your social posts entertaining and informative, and your followers will be glad to see your new content in their feeds, keeping you top of mind so you’re their first stop when they’re ready to make a purchase.

If you want to increase your brand awarness on social media, click the button below to choose a plan.

#2. Not Having a Website

Do you really need a website in 2022? – While living in the digital world, any business owner needs a business website unless they are not interested in growing their brand or company. It has become a common nature for people that they go online to check the company or brand before they hire them or simply purchase their products.

The Business website is not only about selling goods to the clients but it is also about providing care to customers and the things that they need. So it is obvious that you definitely need a business website. Whether you are starting your whole new massive company or just starting a startup.

Benefits of Having a Website

1. Modern Customers Expect It

You are living in 2022 and the lives of our people have been digitized. Before they bother to visit your brand or company physically, they find it convenient to go online and check what your company or brand has to offer them. As a matter of fact, 7 out of 10 customers expect the brands to provide online content about their business on some form of digital property, and more than half head straight to the brand’s website for product information. And if you ask me about the sole reason why a business needs a website, this reason might suffice. So if your business doesn’t have a website, we recommend you to get one because today’s digital-savvy customers may look elsewhere.

2. Target A Wider Audience

A business website helps your business to be accessible from anywhere all across the globe provided there is an internet connection. Since today more than half the world uses the internet, you can target a much wider audience that might be interested in the products your offer or the services you provide. Think of all the people who can’t get to your brick-and-mortar store that you could sell your products to.

3. You can sell products online

Online sales were on the rise even before COVID-19 kept everyone stuck at home. And these trends are expected to continue after businesses reopen to customers. So even if you don’t think of yourself as an “eCommerce” business, you can still use an online store to benefit your offline business.

It can help supplement your income when you’re closed in-person and attract new customers who will now be able to find your services and products via Google and other search engines.

4. Cost-Effective Solution

When the companies come into the market, they spend thousands of dollars creating brochures and distributing them. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on social media advertisements, owning a website for your business can prove to be helpful for you in the longer run. Your potential customers can find out about you and any of your products online. If you get most of your business through networking and personal connections, then they will want to check out your website.

Thinking of having a website that will make your business more accessible to wider auidence? Click the button below to choose from our plan.

#3. Not Having an Email List

With the advent of online marketing, advertisers developed entirely new approaches to reach customers online. Given that the way people interact and consume content online continues to evolve, so do the marketing techniques used to reach them.

With the emerging trends in the digital market, having an Email list is another good formula to allure newbies.

Email Marketing is an easy marketing technique that lets you introduce and promote your product to your email list by quickly sending emails to them, and announcing discounts along with the product mail will sound more compelling. It seems to be a great idea to convince people via Email, perhaps with a few flaws. Having and building Email lists open up a door towards a world of excellent marketing opportunities.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy an Email List

It may seem tempting, but buying an email list is never a good idea.

People will probably mark your email as spam if they didn’t sign up for your list. Plus, it’s not always likely they’re interested in your products if they’ve never been to your website.

It’s not only legal but also ethical to only send emails to people who actually agreed to get emails from you.

In the end, you rarely get what you pay for when you buy an email list.

Benefits of Building an Email List

So, a lot of business owners and bloggers who are just starting out don’t realize how important an email list actually is.

The power of email lists is in the numbers. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing sees a 4300% average return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the US.

Here are some other strong reasons why building an email list is so important:

1. You’ll Easily Get Messages to Customers

There are over 3.6 billion email users according to Radicati Group. That’s more than half of the planet. By 2022, that number will reach 4.2 billion!

In addition, studies show at least 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day. You can go days without checking your social media. These numbers are part of why building an email list is a no-brainer for smart businesses.

When you send an email, your words are delivered directly to someone’s inbox.

However, due to the nature of social media, your customer is much more likely to miss your update in their feed.

This shows why email lists are important and much more effective at getting your message in front of your customer than social media.

2. Get Visitors to Return

More than 70% of people leaving your website never return. For proof, just take a look at your Google Analytics and check out the percentage of new vs returning visitors.

And your visitors are valuable. Out of all the websites in the world, they’ve ended up on yours.

What you don’t want is to miss the chance to turn a casual web surfer into an avid fan who visits your site all the time.

People are much more likely to come back to your website when they see an email in their inbox from you. Invite them back with another great post, a well-written announcement, or a special sale.

3. Huge Companies Love Email Lists

Take a lesson from the digital marketing playbook of the biggest brands in the world. They spend tons of money on campaigns just to get people to sign up for their email list.

For example, just think about the last website you visited to buy things like clothes, shoes, or jewelry. Chances are, they asked for your email.

These big brands are smart to use social media to build an email list on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. They focus so much energy on building their email lists because they’ve seen amazing results.

They know that email lists are super valuable and building an email list helps boost sales. Big-name companies understand that email lists are fantastic long-term investments that have high returns for low costs.

Even the social media companies themselves know how important it is to send messages to their email lists

4. You Own Your Email List

Except for your website, your email list is the only thing you have control over when it comes to your online business.

For instance, you may have thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, but those followers actually belong to those companies.

However, one of the biggest benefits of building an email list is that your list is all yours.

Of course, you can’t control when a social media platform changes its policies. Those changes can influence your campaigns. Getting complete control over your subscriber list and focusing on building your email list is a smart business move.

5. You’ll Make More Money

Imagine that each one of your website visitors is a lead. Doesn’t it make sense to ask for their info so you can follow up with them?

You already know they’re interested in your niche since they’re on your site.

Because of this, subscribers are much more likely to become buyers. Since these people joined your email list from your site, you know they’re already very interested in what you’re offering.

Your subscribers put in the work to hear from you!

Also, since the average ROI on email marketing is 4300%, it ends up being incredibly inexpensive.

#4. Not Building a Brand

Branding—it’s what defines a business and sets it apart from competitors. However, in this era of digital distractions, a catchy name and a nice logo are no longer enough to pique the interest of modern consumers. Add to that the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on society, industries, and consumers and you have a situation where even the most seasoned and agile advertisers are asking, “How do we stay relevant in this unprecedented global crisis?”

Though there is no fool-proof answer to that question, a good start is to learn as much as you can about the latest branding trends that can capture the attention of your target audience.

Solid branding is what will set your company apart from the rest. This is why many companies put a great deal of effort into coming up with a catchy brand name, designing their logo, and planning color schemes.

Important Branding Trends and Developments

1. Social Media Branding

The accessibility of the internet has paved the way for an always-on social media culture. This consequently transformed sites like Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram into prime spots for building your brand. This is why it comes as no surprise that 90% of organizations leverage social media for brand awareness.

That said, you should pay attention to how you showcase your products and services on these platforms. A good way to start is to zero in on which sites your customers mostly use and study the format of each social network. After all, these platforms focus on different types of content. For instance, Twitter relies more on written content while Instagram relies on visuals.

2. Brand Authenticity

Customer trust has hit an all-time low in the past couple of years. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust, The New Brand Equity, surveying 14,000 consumers in 14 countries, concludes that brands have an unprecedented responsibility to improve society. This is why creating an authentic brand image is critical for modern businesses.

Brand trust clearly drives growth, with 61 percent of respondents prepared to advocate if they fully trust a brand, 57 percent prepared to purchase a new product or service, and 31 percent willing to share personal data or participate in activities sponsored by the brand.

This data goes to show that photoshopped ads, heavily edited commercials, and using picture-perfect models no longer have an allure to modern shoppers. They would much rather do business with companies that are honest with them.

#5: Not Having a Paid Media Strategy

Paid media (aka paid media advertising) is an outbound marketing strategy that includes any marketing tactics you pay for. Digitally speaking, paid media includes things like paid search ads, shopping ads, display ads, social media ads, and more.

Paid media is an integral pillar of any successful digital marketing strategy. By reaching your target customers on the third-party platforms where they spend their time online, you and increase brand awareness, engage audiences where they are most receptive, and ultimately drive more sales and revenue.

Whether you’re a marketer or small business trying to keep up with the latest trends in search engine optimization (SEO), social media campaigns, email marketing, paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Adwords – there’s always something new happening that could affect your digital marketing strategy.

Benefits Of Paid Media

1. Organic reach on social media is down. Paid is the only way to deliver results.

Organic content on social media has been on the decline for a few years now. Social media is now a pay-to-play model for brands/companies.

According to Wearesocial.com, the average reach of an organic post on a Facebook Page is a super low 5.20%!

So only one in every 19 fans sees your non-promoted content.

The answer is to boost your distribution by increasing your paid social ad budget.

With paid advertising, you’re guaranteed to reach a defined audience and can utilize your content to elevate your brand with specific targeting and get more qualified leads.

But don’t underestimate the importance of organic marketing. Behind any great paid ad campaign is a consistent and creative organic strategy.

2. Ads are very affordable and measurable

When you’re running paid advertising campaigns, you’re able to reach a very targeted audience. Costs related to paid advertising are dependent on the objective or type of ad you are running.

For example, if your objective is website traffic or leads then you will opt for a cost-per-click (CPC), or if your aim is brand awareness you will opt for a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions).

Ads can be created in mere minutes and there are many tools that help you to create the necessary images at very little or no cost at all.

3. Specific and granular targeting is available

Paid ad targeting can be very specific and allows you to reach relevant visitors who are interested in your brand, fit the demographics of your sales personas and reside in the exact geographic location you want to target.

Let’s say you own a hair salon. You can advertise to potential clients within a 2-3 km radius of your store. You can’t do this with organic SEO or social.

Take a look at your analytics across all your digital platforms and analyze your audience to identify common factors such as keywords, geographic location, demographics, job titles, interests, and common topics.

You can use all of this information to refine your paid ad targeting and pull in more qualified leads and customers.

4. Retargeting and retention

Once a visitor has viewed your website, clicked through an ad, or engaged with your business, you can run a retargeting campaign. 

Retargeted ads will show them highly relevant ads to continuously engage your prospects who have shown an interest in your product or service that otherwise could have slipped away.

By doing so, you are constantly in the back of the mind of your potential customers and therefore increasing your ROI.

You are also top of mind with existing clients that are due for a visit to your business, be it a fast food meal, or even a new motor vehicle! 

Remember, you can get a visitor to your website with a Google Ad, and then you can retarget them on Facebook with Facebook Ads. This is something a lot of people don’t know. 

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Conclusion

As small businesses begin to plan for 2022, we see vital trends emerging to grow our business. The problems faced by small businesses are considerable, and one of the worst things a would-be owner can do is go into business without considering the challenges ahead.

As businesses emerge from over a year of maintenance, many small businesses will look ahead to 2022 as a year to return to strong growth with new products and services. 

We’ve looked at ways to help make these challenges more accessible, but there is no avoiding them. Get in touch with us and let’s make your Business in 2022 a huge success.