Even though last year was fraught with obstacles for most small businesses, with these challenges also came some interesting and potentially innovative changes you can make to your companies. Moreover, they can be viewed as opportunities.
From a host of sources, our own experiences, and lessons from history, here are some trends and opportunities (with possible actions) to make your business more successful.
Agility. Pandemic restrictions will continue to affect businesses of all sizes. Small businesses have an advantage over the big corporations: quick shifts of focus can happen with less disruption, be they in service delivery, marketing or team structuring.
The quicker small businesses are able to pivot and adapt during these ongoing turbulent times, the higher their fitness and success will be.
Remote (and gig) work is the future of work. Studies have found that employees are more (and in most cases, much more) productive than your on-site workers.
This means that you may need to invest in additional technology and software solutions going forward to ensure that your employees can telework.
Consider using gig or freelance workers, you can hire temporarily without benefits and they can work remotely. There are several ways to keep the work environment professional while making your staff feel supported from afar: check in on your employees regularly using communication platforms such as Slack, Zoom or Google Meets; also take time to socialize virtually with your team, preserving your unique company culture and expressing your appreciation for their hard work.
Clarity is essential. Be absolutely clear about whether a meeting or training is going to be vital. Almost everyone is tired of being on virtual meetings that waste our time, leaving us frustrated and overwhelmed.
Before the meeting, collaborate on a clear agenda, clear objectives and desired outcomes. Also, start and finish on time.
Mobile-first communication will become the standard. From communicating with your millennial workforce to reaching your at-home worker, communication is now centered around mobile technologies.
To adapt, your website must be responsive, which means that the size changes to fit the screen on which it is being viewed.
Also, many job applicants will apply directly from their smartphone.
Use text (not email) to communicate with your applicants (as well as customers). To boost employee communication, shift to using communication apps to strengthen productivity, lift engagement, reduce misunderstandings, and so much more.
E-commerce and storefront are the one-two punch to score additional revenue. Give your customers a reason to come to your store; and to shore up the storefront, it is a logical time to invest in e-commerce options.
Fine-tune your small business’ e-commerce presence in 2021; and get everyone e-commerce-facing. Create a seamless e-commerce experience for your customers by making your site mobile-friendly.
Also, leverage social media to gain more sales, and use a cutting edge warehouse to ship orders more quickly.
One way to start an online store is with Wix; it has e-commerce tools to help you set up a variety of specialized services, and its advanced features include drop-shipping, managing orders and payments, using data-driven insights to monitor performance and more.
Go cashless. The economy is predicted to go cashless in the near future. Digital pay is convenient and secure, and companies like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal offer businesses a way to reap the benefits of selling products in a touchless environment.
While e-commerce obviously lends itself to the digital payment, at least having a cashless payment option beyond a credit card is a good for your business.
Being eco-friendly and socially responsible. Customers, especially younger ones, are demanding companies step up and address social and environmental issues such as climate change, species extinction, and more.
You should focus on going green whenever possible in your business; it will save energy, lower carbon dioxide. Publicize your efforts on social media and your website, and reap the benefits of more customers in 2021. Plus, in the U.S. there are tax credits and incentives on a state level for companies using solar and renewable energy.
Companies are embracing change and supporting multiple causes around the world.
Raise awareness and make a difference with strong nonprofit websites, petition and other forms of supporting causes, both online and off.
Virtual services will continue to be in high demand. The pandemic has led to increased demand for certain business types, particularly those related to technology and virtual health and fitness. These include cybersecurity, at-home fitness, food delivery, gaming, home improvement, and telemedicine businesses.
If you are considering starting a business, or are looking for ways to pivot or expand your business, look to these business categories for inspiration.
Focus on user reviews. Users have started to focus on a single aspect above all others, the reviews; they feel a lot more comfortable purchasing something that another individual has bought and tried, especially if it is from a smaller business that might lack the credibility of a big brand. There is data that shows 92% of potential customers will not purchase your products if there is not a review online.
Having a 4-star (or higher) rating by 100+ customers makes your offering that much easier and more appealing to customers. When real people advocate your brand online, your business and product become more trustworthy and can lead to increased sales.
Online reviews cost you nothing on sites like Yahoo!, Yelp, or Google My Business; plus the site traffic is high and it does a lot to help you build trust and your reputation without spending money on paid advertising.
Talent challenges. The war for talent was only paused during the early months of Covid-19, and it has already resumed in most industries; small businesses will continue to battle talent problems.
Organizations have a choice: they can build learning and people-development cultures to keep teams engaged long-term, or they can build recruiting empires to address the constant turnover of employees.
Employee happiness matters. Employees want to be happy at work and that means feeling like they matter. By keeping your employees happier through company culture and communication, can boost productivity 10-25%, and that contributes to the bottom line. What people believe, think, say and do as well as the collective output of their behaviors define their company culture.
Having open and responsive communication will result in better alignment to vision, values, goals and prosperity.
Non-monetary benefits and perks. Today’s employees want their daily work experience to include more effective motivators like telecommunication, flexible work hours, paternity leave and more.
While it appears like these perks are “just nice to have”, they are very important.
Companies need to recognize there is a strong correlation between engaged employees and key business results.
Listen to your customers. The businesses that will survive and thrive are those that evolve with their customers.
Talk to your customers as much as you can, not because they can tell you what they want or need because they can tell you how they feel. Expect fear to be feeling number one for most and tune your strategic thinking to finding ways to be the light in the dark.
Empathy is the gold standard. Customers are looking for more than just quality products and services from businesses, they are looking for compassion and empathy. In fact, customers are four times more likely to buy from and recommend a business that has a strong, identifiable purpose. A business’ purpose includes its core values, business practices, customer service philosophy, and support for social causes.
To build trust with customers and create brand loyalty, you have to connect with their minds and hearts. Forging that connection means demonstrating empathy, and demonstrating empathy comes down to addressing your customers’ needs and fears.
To do that, you may have to tailor your products or services, reexamine your customer service policies, or use a more compassionate voice in your marketing materials.
Customer personalization. Providing your customer with a personalized experience is what it is all about, after all, customers are individuals with their own tastes and wants. People today do not want to be bombarded with too many options and prefer a personal touch instead.
You should cut out the noise and show the options most relevant to your potential and existing customers.
By taking a few simple steps, your business can offer personalized service, thus strengthening your customer engagement; fully engaged customers are 23% more likely than average customers to spend with your business, which may also help increase your long-term profit.
Start thinking like your customer. Develop a buyer persona to gather some invaluable data about who your clients are.
Explore web analytics tools such as Google Analytics for gathering insights about your visitors. Use the knowledge you have gathered, track strategic points as your customer navigates your site and tailor their personal experience using marketing automation and customization.
Smart personalization engines that recognize customer intent will also enable digital businesses to increase profits by up to 15%. Learn more about your customers’ past purchasing behavior, then make product and/or service recommendations.
Treat your loyal customers well. Learn from the airline industry. Make a special effort to cater to those customers who come back to you time-after-time.
For loyal customers, create a Members Area, site visitors can log into their personal account to manage their order status or appointments, chat with other members and access other types of gated, exclusive content and offers.
Grow an online community. Create an online community of like-minded individuals to foster valuable connections around your brand.
By sharing quality content about your field of expertise, from webinars to blogs, you will be able to establish yourself as an authority in your industry and gain the trust of your audience. Other forms of video content you can create and share includes live streaming, a live Q&A, or an online course. A good way to support your community and keep it growing is by providing a forum where people can share and exchange ideas around your site. Create a blog to help solidify your voice in your field of business and continuously link you to your audience.
Sometimes your online community needs extra support.
Allow site visitors to reach you instantaneously by adding a live chat app to your site and help guide them through any queries they might have.
Think smaller and simpler. In addition to people’s desire for something that feels more personal, there is a trend for smaller and simpler.
That means less content, shorter videos, more intimate launches, mini-courses, 142-page books (instead of 284 pages). Changes in design include larger headline fonts, muted color splashes of retro illustrations, and more white space on web pages. Also consider nostalgia and the emotional desire for simplicity.
Use mobile marketing. It means marketing your business to your mobile user audience by reaching them via their smartphones or tablets (an estimated 5 billion people carry mobile devices worldwide); it is likely the most direct channel to your audience.
Beyond crafting a great mobile website, there are a number of ways to take advantage of mobile marketing for your small business: you can keep your customers up-to-date by sending text messages of your latest promotion with consent; and use geo-targeting to reach out to potential clients who are in your area using Google ads, which allows advertisers to target mobile users in specific geographical locations.
Consider your own app. With more people using their mobile devices to conduct daily, it might be time to pair your small business website with a mobile app of your very own.
With a designated app, you can manage your business at fingers’ reach. Your customers can book services, purchase products and stay connected via chat, groups or a forum on the go. You can also up your marketing strategy by sending mobile push notifications from your app. Create a mobile community with your app and invite customers to become members to better engage with your business and stay up to date with your latest offerings.
Understand Generation Z. Not only is Generation Z (86 million people) entering the workforce, they make up around 40% of consumers.
In order for you to fully take advantage of Generation Z employees coming of into the workforce, you need to understand how their needs and priorities (stable work-life balance, positive relationships, transparency, know what to expect, feedback, up-to-date technology, ability to lower stress levels, view failure as an opportunity to grow) differ from generations. This will allow you to better prepare your hiring process so you know what kind of candidates to look for and what questions to ask.
Video will continue to grow as a content medium. People prefer viewing and listening over reading. Think of video as asynchronous virtual content.
Create and use video to draw, engage people and perhaps they will pass it along to others.
Provide more personal 1 to 1 platforms for sales, technical support even as a form of commenting and collaborating. Consider using tools such as Loom and BombBomb.
Stories are more important than a news feed. Stories, short video content that disappear after 24 hours, are “in the moment” content that makes a stronger connection to an audience.
Your business needs to build an authentic voice and use it to connect with your audience. While stories are short in length and disappear, you are able to reach a larger audience and can quickly catch their attention.
Unique online courses. Online courses are a great way to your pivot business during the pandemic.
If you have a unique knowledge base and a customer engagement model, pouring knowledge into do-it-yourself courses can independently save your business this year. It is not limiting, and it becomes passive income, as long as you use quality cameras while conveying your original course content.
Create an excellent digital footprint and visibility. As nearly everyone is spending significant time on the internet, having a great digital presence and branding will help when competing for new projects, contracts, partnerships and opportunities.
Digital presence is an excellent way to highlight your product or service, engage and build community.
Be active on social media. Understand that 84% of Americans are shopping for something at any given moment so ensure you are capitalizing on social channels to bring these consumers to your site to purchase your goods or services.
Use social media to be visible and promote critical business functions such as sales, marketing, and customer service. It will translate into more traffic, customers, and profit for your small business. It can help to bring aboard a Generation Z worker who is incredibly tech-savvy when it comes to social media marketing as this channel alone can open doors to better profit and more customers. Also consider hiring a social media influencer to bring your brand to their ready-made audience, and sales usually follow as a result.
UX and SEO are attached. Unless you provide a great mobile user experience (UX) your business is going to suffer in search engine optimization (SEO). UX is navigation, content structure, site speed and security. With its mobile first point of view, Google is raising the SEO bar with core web vitals in May 2021.
Be prepared, Core Web Vitals are designed to measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page. Specifically, these are defined as the Core Web Vitals: the time it takes for a page’s main content to load, an ideal LCP measurement is 2.5 seconds or faster; the time it takes for a page to become interactive, an ideal measurement is less than 100 ms; and the amount of unexpected layout shift of visual page content, an ideal measurement is less than 0.1.
Trend of supporting small, local businesses. The pandemic has driven many customers to support small businesses and local economic growth. Customers are recognizing their ability to shift their own local economies in states, counties, and cities.
For business owners, capitalizing on this trend requires investing in local marketing and community growth. In addition to boosting your social media presence with local hashtags and campaigns, consider donating to a local cause or participating in a virtual community fundraiser or event.
Local community networking. People buy from people, especially now that we are limited in where we are able to go. If small businesses want to compete with the big brands and online options, they will need to connect with their communities more than ever.
Nothing helps a small business more than locals spreading the word to their friends. So get “out there” on network sites like LinkedIn, Meetup, among others and watch your business thrive!
Consider joint ventures. While structuring and managing take time and effort, small businesses that seek out creative collaborations and joint ventures with others can be beneficial.
Explore diversifying the risk via another collaborator and entering markets not previously considered will increase your business’ chances of longer-term survivability.
5G helps. 5G networks can open avenues; it pushes download speeds of about 1 Gbps and with high download speeds, and changes how we interact on the internet.
Using 5G makes interactions far more instantaneous which benefits small businesses so much because they can communicate and get things done so much faster.
Leverage AI. AI and predictive analytics will not replace the human when it comes to delivering the customer experience.
Think of AI as the co-worker who helps us become more efficient; use AI to augment your workforce, to give people better information, greater insight and the ability to perform their roles better so customers are better served.
Voice recognition is developing. Smart speakers being used for voice search because of its ease of use and speed. This will reshape search engine optimization, as search is shifts to conversation and long-tail queries.
Businesses need to create a “voice” presence on their online channels – it is a golden opportunity for small businesses to adapt while voice searching is so new.
Technological disruption expands marketplace. Pandemic-fueled technological disruption will continue to shift the very nature of work, affecting how organizations maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Small businesses, which, in an increasingly interconnected virtual world, will be competing not only with bigger players in the market, but also with other small businesses from around the globe.
Promote data transparency. If you are handling personal information, from collecting your customers’ names and email addresses to their credit card details, it is important you implement and provide a privacy policy for your site; it is a statement that discloses some or all of the ways a website collects, uses and manages the data of its visitors and customers.
By creating a privacy policy, you are fulfilling a legal requirement to protect your client’s privacy, while also following a good business practice. Make sure to be clear with your customers about the type of information you collect and how you use it. Also mention your site’s use of cookies, which are small pieces of data stored on a site visitor’s browser. Being as transparent as possible with your customers builds trust and reinforces your credibility.
Data-driven digital strategies. Small companies need to work intensively on digital strategies to adapt to new forms of consumption and other consequences of the pandemic.
It is important to carry out market studies that allow small businesses to know the new demands firsthand. Additionally, small businesses should work on the flexibility of structures and costs to make them viable and competitive.
Virtual efficiency. During the pandemic, every business has faced being forced to digitize, virtualize and dematerialize.
There are huge opportunities to help businesses recover from lost revenue and use new technology more effectively with virtual teams. Efficiency and productivity experts that specialize in virtual teams can help.
Investments in infrastructure. Next year will pay dividends to small businesses who invest wisely now in themselves and their customers. The small businesses that are operating out of fear right now will face even more fear and losses to competitors who are investing in their infrastructure (basic facilities, structures, services, and software upon which the rest of a business is built) to stay relevant now.
Do not let fear drive you. Find the opportunities and capitalize. Your investments now will pay dividends.
Small business funding. Whether your goal is to move your business, add staff, increase marketing spend, or invest in e-commerce, small business lending will continue to be a go-to resource for companies in all industries.
Alternative cash resources like 401(k) funding are just as important to companies as traditional small business funding. The current low interest rates coupled with the cash infusion from the Paycheck Protection Program this year will help many small businesses get through a difficult time.
Focus on profitability. Companies are focusing on their operations and taking stock of where they can optimize processes to save money.
To stay nimble and profitable, you may have to pare down your offerings and focus only on the services or products generating the most revenue.
Financial transformation projects, can help reduce costs and keep cash flow steady; think: automating administrative tasks, consolidating software systems, renegotiating vendor contracts, or outsourcing tedious services.
In summary, paying attention to the latest small business news and trends, plus re-engaging with customers, and taking up ecological and societal responsibilities puts you ahead of your competition. It is easier to grow company sales, offer better customer service, and operate more effectively. And do not be afraid to ask for help along the way.