Small Business Planning 2016- Business & Marketing Trends

January 25, 2016 by Ed Becker

Small Business Planning 2016- Business & Marketing Trends

Buying habits, the way consumers want to receive advertising and the way we all view our daily information is always changing. The future of marketing has to change with the habits and needs of your target market. Consumers do not want to be advertised to, they want to find their own information. We are a mobile society; the days of television commercials targeting a large market do not work anymore. Mobile apps, social media and green content are the routes that will drive inbound marketing to your brand. Marketing and business trends for 2016 are new and exciting, you should definitely stay abreast of what is up and coming. Just don’t jump on all the new band wagons and forego the old school trends that still work well.

 

New Trends for 2016

• The major change in consumer use that affects marketing and your business is the shift from desktops and laptops to mobile devices. This is going to be such a major shift that Google is actually giving higher rankings to websites that are mobile optimized. Mobile traffic will be a priority for marketing and business growth. Think about this statistic: people check their mobile phones at least 100 times a day.
• On the same path as mobile use will be the explosion of apps for marketing and business use. This is already becoming apparent as we are seeing apps become more common than company websites. The surge in app creation suggests that apps could easily replace websites in the future. For now, your company website, online shopping and marketing have to be optimized for mobile use to stay alive in the market. If you have a mobile app already or are considering creating one this is the time to get started.
• Online shopping will take a new path with buy buttons. Pinterest and Facebook are now allowing marketers to place buy buttons in content to enable consumers to purchase directly from within a post. Instagram will be following suit, and Google already has Google shopping designed to keep you from straying too far from their main page.
• Video Ads will also continue to increase in use and effectiveness and begin to dominate. This is much easier now with YouTube, Facebook Live and even Bing offering video options. This trend shows that consumers are accepting video advertising and ads in video.

Old School Trends to Keep

• Blogs are going to stay. New blogs pop up just about daily, older ones have been around for years now, they are not going away. It is always wise to update your blog to ensure that it is mobile friendly. Keep your posts green and fresh with content that is useful to your readers.
• Podcasts are not only still viable, but are growing again! If you aren’t doing podcasts, it could be a new trend for your company.
• Newsletters are great to reach out to all of your contacts at once or to target specific groups. This gives you flexibility in your marketing.
• Email marketing between newsletters is still going strong. Again, you want to ensure that your content is useful and works well with mobile email apps.

If you are new to online marketing or you simply have no experience or skills in this area, it could be something that you choose to outsource. Small business owners wear so many hats, it is easy to let your marketing plan get pushed aside for other priorities. Marketing cannot be a low priority, if you do not have time or skills to keep your marketing strong, definitely consider outsourcing to a professional marketing assistant or marketing company.