These Small Business Marketing Trends Are Dominating 2023
2022 has been an exciting year for small business marketing trends as businesses continue to adjust to changes in consumer habits and online shopping behavior. While shoppers tighten up their spending habits and we enter unsteady economic territory, the right marketing services can ensure small businesses that they’re still reaching that target audience.
Our team at Splurge Media investigated 2022 small business marketing trends and reflected on what we expect to see in 2023 and beyond. Keep reading for more insights on the role of social media, consumer spending habits, building a brand persona and more.
What were the small business marketing trends in 2022?
You probably won’t be surprised to learn some of the trends in consumer habits and marketing this year. Here are a few examples:
- While consumer spending is down, it’s only down slightly while consumers battle inflation challenges.
- More online shoppers than ever before are interacting with brands through their mobile devices only. 56% of consumers use a mobile device to search for businesses online. Millennials were the most likely group to use mobile for online searches, coming in at 74%.
- Social media gained credibility as a viable online marketplace for many businesses. Consumers tended to give strong consideration to brands they heard about through word of mouth and social media posts.
- Consumers showed continued interest in the values, origin story, and community responsibility of the brands and businesses they interact with.
- Messaging was most effective at connecting with consumers when it was genuine, transparent and honest. Consumers expected the brands they purchased from to have higher ethical and moral standards than before, including in supply chain management, environmental responsibility, and working conditions for employees.
- Brand design was more vibrant and creative than before, as many businesses interacted most often with consumers online.
Some of these trends should come as no surprise, since we predicted them at the end of 2021. Consumers and businesses are doing more and more business online, but that doesn’t mean brick and mortar stores are dead.
Do you know how to use these trends to your advantage when creating next year’s marketing strategy? If not, keep reading for more predictions and how to use them.
What digital marketing for small businesses will look like in 2023
Given this year’s trends, it’s easy to make a few predictions for for small businesses marketing trends online in 2023. Others are not so obvious.
One thing all businesses need to focus on this year is optimizing their website and all digital touchpoints for mobile use. Millenials and Gen Z were the biggest mobile users when it came to online shopping, so you can expect this trend to continue as these consumers age and gain more spending leverage.
Most web building platforms default to building the desktop version first, so don’t forget to revisit the mobile version to better optimize spacing, font size, color contrast, button function and general accessibility and user experience. If you’re not giving the mobile version of your website and online presence a strong review after adding content, you’re definitely losing customers.
This year, Google rolled out some new specifications to their search algorithms that affected nearly every business in the world. Web crawlers are looking for more than just standard presentation of information these days, so SEO optimization will continue to be especially important.
Be sure that you’re using the most relevant keywords to target your specific audience in 2023. Businesses will need to continue adding content to their webpages, but will now be favored for adding to and deepening conversations on their chosen topics.
While we’re discussing content, it’s important to note that Google has also changed the way it determines your credibility. In 2023, you’ll need to stay within your area of expertise, cite your credentials and allow Google crawlers to recognize why you’re qualified to speak on these topics, and do more than just regurgitate information that already exists online.
Google also now considers the general user experience of your webpage, so 2023 will demand that businesses assess their pages for speed, accessibility, and minimal ads or distractions on the page.
Our lead SEO expert, Ahosan Kabir, told us:
“New ranking factors will focus on EAT (expertise, authority, and trust) signals, niche, and valuable conversational content (Deep contextual content that shares value), content ready for voice Search and video inclusion within the content, and more localized content for local and small businesses.” - Ahosan Kabir, SEO lead at Splurge Media
For these reasons, we expect digital marketing efforts to be more sophisticated, relatable, transparent, unique, and authentic in 2023 than they have been in previous years.
What’s changed in offline marketing
When it comes to offline marketing (all non-digital marketing efforts), we expect consumer trends to have some of the same effects.
Offline marketing materials will still need to lead with brand values in 2023, as consumers continue to become more internet-savvy, better informed, and more invested in the values of the companies they do business with. Even offline marketing materials should give the consumer some idea of personalization, or why they were targeted with this piece of information.
Changes in graphic design will be just as important for physical marketing materials as they are for digital efforts. While he recognizes that “almost 90% of the touchpoints for a brand are now digital,” our in-house graphic design lead, Leandro Ramos, expects to see more vibrant colors in graphic design elements this year, as well as more unique typography that conveys brand personality well.
For businesses that prefer to serve local customers, have a long-standing reputation in their communities, or just aren’t big fans of the online marketplace, it’s still important to at least be reachable to visiting customers. Even businesses that are doing well with their offline audience now need to have an established, optimized Google My Business profile in order to reach passers-by who are searching for “businesses near me” while traveling. Keeping your business hours, services, and contact information up-to-date is especially important as we continue to become more digital.
Content is still king, but it’s evolving
Content audits will become increasingly important in 2023 as businesses fight for relevance while content continues to gain traction as an effective marketing channel. Revisiting previously posted content this year can help you refresh your website and increase your likelihood of ranking on Google.
As we mentioned above, adding to the conversation is very important to Google’s updated algorithm criteria. Make sure to make content your own, relate it to your brand values and specific areas of expertise (especially if you can link or display credentials in this area), and keep it interesting by showing your brand’s personality.
This applies not only to blog content and social media posts, but across most consumer touchpoints. Our Digital Marketing Strategist, Paul Johsnon, gives this suggestion for business heading into the new year:
“Personalization is the ultimate goal for digital marketing, and efforts to personalize will only become more relevant in 2023. Ads, posts, and content need to be impressive in the way that they relate value to a specific end user, pointing to a need for advanced segmentation and creative use of channels to build out touchpoints for each group.” - Paul Johnson, Director of Marketing Operations at Splurge Media
Speaking of creative use of channels, short form video content is increasingly more relevant for businesses who want to get notice. For most online shoppers and web browsers, your business has a few precious seconds to make a strong impression. In fact, only 4% of digital ads are viewed for more than 2 seconds. Rapidly consumable media, especially if it adds value through education or humor, is one of the most effective ways to hold you audience’s attention.
There’s no better example of this than what social media platform TikTok has become. Like Vine (may it rest in peace), this platform allows instantly consumable, short form content access that allows the user to decide very quickly whether they want to interact with a business or personal brand.
In addition to social media channels, short form video content is also very useful for general advertising. According to project manager and PPC veteran Alexandra Manriquez, in terms of video ads for Google ads and social media, “It’s proven that people tend to make a decision faster after watching a video ad. However, it is crucial to have a high-quality video because it is a very competitive field.” So while content remains king in 2023, you might need to hire a professional or invest in creating great content for your online audience.
The role of social media marketing in 2023
While some businesses still aren’t leveraging the use of social media channels, Paul’s advice about “creative use of channels to build out touchpoints” is especially important here. More importantly, consumer spending activity is trending toward social media whether you’re on board or not.
Social media platforms are the perfect place to give your target audience “behind the scenes” look at the business they want to interact with. That’s why it’s a great place to show your brand personality and connect with your clients on the platforms they enjoy the most. “Segmenting your audience” as Paul mentions is crucial here, and you should consider carefully the voice and content you display on each channel. Social media channels vary widely in structure, presentation and even tone, and using more than one channel is a great way to reach different groups of potential customers.
Social media users are also increasingly interested in making purchases and handling customer service requests through social media channels alone. Social media has allowed shoppers to access products and services tailored to their tastes and interests, in the same way they tailor their channel feeds. Missing out on the opportunity to sell products and services on social channels is, quite literally, selling yourself short.
Influencer marketing, once a mostly overlooked form of advertising, is predicted to become more and more relevant this year and next. This is partly because word of mouth is important to today’s online shopper, especially for Millenial, Gen Z, and Gen X audiences (in that order). The other reason this is likely to continue growing as a viable marketing tool is because businesses who have worked with influencers in recent years have enjoyed great success in doing so, and 89% say they will continue working with influencers.
Not every business needs influencers to market on social media. The most important takeaways are that more and more online shoppers see social media as a credible online marketplace, and social media is the perfect place to connect with your audience on a personal level.
Will email marketing for small businesses still exist this year?
Email marketing, the “OG” of online marketing, will continue to be effective next year, despite it being somewhat unpopular with consumers.
Using more genuine language and leading with your brand values will make your email marketing more effective, reinforcing the general consumer trend in desire for transparency and social responsibility from the brands they buy from.
Email marketing can also become a community building tool, which is also increasingly important to today’s online shopper. Internet users want to feel like they belong to a community of folks who believe in the brands and ideals that they do, so email marketing can still be a great way to keep people connected and help build out online communities, thus building the strength of your brand or business.
We’re all inundated with email marketing everyday, so for more tips about how to create a successful email campaign that gets the open rates you’re looking for, check out this recent article from us.
Ring in 2023 with a with an exploration meeting, or stay tuned to our blog
We gained many more insights about what small businesses can expect in online shopping and marketing trends next year. The new year is approaching quickly. The good news is, there’s lots of opportunity to fine-tune and improve your marketing efforts next year. The bad news is, those efforts can be time consuming when you have business to conduct.
This year, stay up-to-date with our blog to ensure you have the best industry insights and tips to improve marketing success, drive web traffic, and acquire new clients this year. Or, get in touch today to schedule a call with our team of marketing experts to find out what we can do to help.