When COVID-19 hit in 2020, many small businesses faced many challenges, forcing some to shut down. It forced them to find different ways they can use to automate most of the activities. They adapted to how to find new customers and retain the rest, monitor their competitors, and stay ahead of them. Trends solve all the challenges and provide new priorities for the business.
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This guide will discuss the common business trends used by small businesses in 2023. Most of the strategies work, and they are easier to implement. Some take time, while others provide faster results in a short period.
- Being active on social media platforms
There are over a billion users on social media platforms, making it a great place to find new customers. It has encouraged small businesses to create social media pages, be active, and post content on what they do. Apart from marketing, you can use social media pages for engagement and exposure.
You can also create a personal experience by hosting live meetings and webinars with your social media followers. The connection improves reputation making clients trust your service and product more.
Each social media provides analytics that you can take advantage of and determine which products are doing well, the age and location of your customers, etc.
Only some social media platforms are suitable for some businesses. You must test to find out which one is working and which one needs to be fixed.
2. Using short videos for marketing
Many small businesses embrace short videos, especially with the emergence of the Tiktok social media platform. Most of the videos are below one minute to increase engagement for your clients.
Some common ways of creating short videos include using TikTok videos, dealing with influencers related to your products, and creating a sponsored campaign using reels and other formats.
There are many applications, both online and offline, that can help you create videos quickly. Some common ones include Canva, Adobe Effects, Inshot, Capcut, etc.
Most social media platforms use algorithms that show your video content to customers based on browsing and search history. The cookies in their browsers make your content appear in their feeds, which may make them eventually purchase your product in the long run.
3. Having a good supply chain
Small businesses may need to change how they supply their goods and products. They must put up strong measures to ensure no shortages or out-of-stock issues. In case of any problems or delays, you must communicate with your customers quickly to show consistency and instability.
4. Embracing automation
Many activities happen with small businesses, from human resources, payroll, attendance, customer service, etc. The business uses different tools and software to automate functions. Some activities include using CRM software, robots for delivery, and e-commerce. It gives employees more time to focus on other aspects of the company, increasing efficiency and productivity.
Automation has led to many layoffs among companies. It has also eliminated the hard labour and all the workers who used to congest companies. It reduces human errors and improves workers’ workflow, improving results for small businesses.
5. Embracing remote work
Remote work enables companies to hire workers worldwide and work from home without coming to the office. Nowadays, most companies prefer employees to work from home since it increases production by making workers happier. With remote work, there has been a significant change in culture since you can now conduct meetings depending on the company schedule and discuss different aspects of the job.
Remote work has forced companies to change how they communicate with their workers to improve teamwork and collaboration. Slack, Asana, Trello, and Discord were commonly used project management applications. The company also developed rules that all the workers were to follow when working on different projects.
6. Implementing e-commerce sites
Most small businesses in the past had no websites that enabled them to sell their goods and services online. Nowadays, most of these businesses embrace e-commerce and build platforms where customers can buy, order and pay online without physically visiting the shop. You can create an e-commerce site on WordPress, Shopify, Weebly, and Wix.com.
They increase conversions as there are higher chances of reaching many people. All you need is to ensure that your site is fast, has a good user experience, and you do fast shipping. It increases the trust among your customers, making your small business make more sales resulting in increased profits.
7. Improving buyer experience
Ensure to improve your buyer’s experience using different activities. Customers generally like a good experience when they visit your business. It makes them like your products and services and end up purchasing them. Most are easier to implement and don’t require large budgets to boost customer engagement. Offer your buyers a secured shopping experience on the site. To do this, install SSL cert on the server. A website owner can purchase Comodo SSL, RapidSSL or Thawte SSL certificates to secure transactions.
Once you treat your customers well, they feel valued. Some other common ways to increase experience include implementing personalization by referring to customers’ names when sending them email marketing and transactional emails.
You can also read all the customer reviews and fix what they complained about; when you mess up with your clients, you need to create empathy with them to make them feel you care.
8. Ensuring sustainability
Sustainability happens when you take care of the environment, its people, social issues, and sustainability. Small businesses should find ways of supporting sustainability. Customers who realize their business value sustainability make them like and trust your business. They feel you appreciate other issues, and it would be good if they support your business too.
Some of the common ways a small business can use to promote sustainability include;
- Coming up with policies and rules that support the environment
- Eliminate the use of plastics and save energy
- Improve your work culture; try working in a paperless environment
- Give donations to support different sustainability programs.
9. Using artificial intelligence to carry out different activities
One can use many technologies to implement different aspects of the business. The commonly used technology is Artificial Intelligence which improves efficiency by performing human-related tasks.
It enables the company to make quicker and faster decisions that enhance its profits. You can combine it with technologies like big data to get maximum results and insights.
Small businesses can use AI to transcribe customers’ calls and take action swiftly by either replying or forwarding them to the nearest agent. It also examines your business insights and data and recommends increasing sales and campaigns. With the emergence of chatGPT, you can use it to create marketing and content outlines, blog posts, social media content, etc.
10. Improve Security
There are higher cases of cyber attacks currently happening online. The hackers target most small businesses with insufficient structures to protect their resources. Companies should put more measures to convince customers that their data is safe and protected and no one else can access it. Some of the common attacks include social engineering, phishing, and malware.
The best ways for small businesses to implement this include training their workers and customers on cybersecurity, data backups and encryption, and VPNs and firewalls. Some methods are cheap, while others require small businesses to hire extra professionals to help them implement some strategies.
Conclusion
Implementing these steps at first can be challenging, but everything will eventually work with time. You can implement all of them if you have not yet done anything. You can start slowly and grow as the year progresses. Some trends can be costly as they require you to pay for some subscriptions and hire more people or professionals.
