Small Business Marketing Trends 2015: Fresh Ideas for You

Technology never stops evolving and each year we see new devices and innovations growth. And all these changes greatly impact marketing and electronic commerce spheres. This year we can see a significant influence of mobile devices use on the way people get info of new products or places. This is one of the major tendencies in marketing we expect to see throughout 2015.

Small Business Marketing Trends 2015

In this article you will find out what big challenges will rule small businesses this year and what impact they will have on your business. Most of those challenges are connected with content and social media strategies you should implement into your marketing plan. With these small business marketing trends 2015 you will stay aware of the latest changes and innovations that should help you to outperform your rivals.

Mobile Devices Win

Attention to mobile devices grows in 2015 and will grow further. People like getting access to the latest information “on the go” and a dominance of mobile web is so evident today that it even doesn’t need a proof. With the latest research, over 90% of American adults own mobile devices. And more than a half of tablets and smartphones owners use them for browsing Internet, searching info about local stores, restaurants and hotels. Thus, mobile-oriented marketing strategy should be a top priority for all marketers who wish to succeed.

SmartInsights Infographic

Additionally, growth of popularity of wearable devices (like Apple Smartwatch) should open new perspectives for businesses. As Search Engine Land states, wearables already gained $6B last year and are expected to raise up to $30B to 2018. It’s a great opportunity for advertisers to try new spheres of marketing and offer owners of wearable devices first portions of wearable-device-friendly coupons and services.

Learn more about owners of wearables and their habits to understand and predict their behavior in feature and you will break the new ground before your rivals.

Social Media Marketing Grows

Social media today play a vital role in generating followers, spreading info and gaining new customers. Today more people are looking for reviews, new products and offers on social networks. The importance of social media for small businesses increases day by day. Thus, in 2013 over 40% of customers revealed they purchased a product after reading about it on social networks.

After Facebook and Twitter announced their tests over the “Buy” button, marketing on social media becomes even more attractive for brands and small businesses. This button can be included in posts and advertising, and should allow users purchase products without leaving the social network. It should give more opportunities for businesses that want significant return of investment from social media than just simple likes and shares.

Another social media focus is brand advocates. Trust to reviews and recommendations from real people – like friends and relatives – increases greatly and impacts the way people decide to purchase this or that product. Closer work with brand advocates on social media will also benefit small businesses in terms of achieving wider audience and natural comments to their content and products.

Such helpful marketing services like CRM providers also reveal more attention to social media integrating their services within the most popular social networks. Most of those providers have already automated their processes that include social sharing and spreading brands’ “word of mouth” across the most popular social platforms. If you’re still not familiar with CRM services, here are a few providers to get you started:

• Main Street Hub

  This platform posts and shares content from your brand on Facebook and Twitter, responds to customer’s reviews on social networks and communicates with people to achieve the best possible feedback from them. What you pay for it: $199 to $299 per month.

• SalesForce

  Today this company offers a much wider range of apps and services that allow small businesses spread their “word of mouth” on social media, organize high-quality customer service and get the freshest analytics on desktop or mobile devices.

• Yodle

  Another provider of complete marketing services, from website building and content management to running social media brand pages and email marketing.

A Piece of Advice

To run successful campaigns across social media platforms, you should consider what are the most popular networks today. In 2015 visual content rules the world and thus, platforms that offer sharing cool photos and videos will rule.

Heidi Cohen Infographic

According to the new surveys, Facebook will outperform YouTube in terms of video views and sharing. On the other hand, Facebook loses its positions in terms of user engagement. Instagram now comes forward and becomes a super-trendy and a highly popular platform for marketing.

Focus on Content

Content stays the king in 2015 and will rule the marketing world further. High-quality content is still the best way to become visible in SERPs, engage more users and make them stay with your website longer. Thus, investing in professional content creators and content managers will become another priority for small businesses.

Paid Search Ads Rule

Despite the fact that traditional PPC marketing is no longer the best way of reaching new customers and this tactic loses its positions extremely quickly, paid advertising will grow in 2015 and still be a vital part of marketing strategy in future.

With the rise of new methods of paid advertising like Buzztala paid ads will transform into some kind of “organic/paid ads” that may become a brand new way of getting new customers.

Another way of using paid advertising is Facebook ads. During recent years Facebook has developed a strategy of offering a high-quality content to their users and shoving off “overly-promotional” content – unpaid promotional posts that business owners try to pass off as natural content. It becomes harder for small businesses to reach their target audience. Thus, businesses on Facebook will have two choices: either creating competitive high-quality content or paying for promotional posts.

Personalization

Every marketer’s goal is engaging a broader and more numerous audience of loyal customers and followers. In 2015 this trend continues but evolves into a more personal attitude to each customer.

Thus, you can make your website more specific to satisfy needs of different groups of people. You can make it look different and display different products targeted on men or women to different visitors. The same idea works for emails. Adding a personalization field to your email that will automatically display a user’s name in it makes it more engaging and increases chances this email will be read. Thus, Aberdeen Group’s report in 2008 revealed that due to email personalization click through rates and conversion rates increased for more than 10% each.

Those are the major trends that we will definitely spot in small business marketing in 2015. If you have your own ideas on what will rule marketing this year – please, share your opinion in comments.