Article first published as Predictions for 2012 : What Will Small Business Adopt? on Technorati.
It’s a brave new world that we live in and one that is exciting if you buy into all the new technology trends. The year 2012 is going to be another big one for marketers with a whole lot more focus on mobile and the likely emergence of Augmented Reality.
But this will not filter down to small business. Economies of scale often sees the little guy amongst the last to adopt new trends. So what will the small business owner find the time and muster the enthusiasm to cover in 2012? What will he/she choose not to ignore this time around and invest resources in the name of marketing?
Advertising
Small business will begin to realise the absence of a return on investment with their local newspaper advertisements. They will start to buy into the online environment, even if they don’t sell, and start to uitilise the opportunities.
Facebook Advertising
Obviously Facebook is a big thing.. just about everywhere. We just about all have a profile page, many small businesses even have a business page but 2012 will see a rise in small business advertising on Facebook. Facebook is a great opportunity for small business to compete against the big boys but sometimes a kick-along will be needed, particularly when first starting a Facebook page. It is still reasonably cheap and if your campaign is effective, not only do you get them (customers) for a second whilst they read your advertisement, they’ll click ‘Like’ and you’ll have them much longer.
Mobile Advertising
The adoption of smartphones has been significant and 2012 sees another groundbreaking year. It won’t take small business too long to start thinking about mobile, perhaps because everyone has one. Unfortunately this may not mean that small business will rebuild their websites to ensure they’re optimised but they will look to advertising. But what small business will do will be to recognise the ability to target local people whilst they’re out and about, and perhaps even more appealing the really cheap prices.
StumbleUpon Advertising
In the three advertising trends I have noted, i’m certainly less confident that small business will start to really adopt StumbleUpon Advertising. However, I really hope they do. StumbleUpon advertising can be as cheap as mobile and direct some significant traffic to a business’ website. If small business do take up StumbleUpon Advertising it will be the price point being the contributing factor.
Social Media
Small business has certainly been aware of social media and many have even created business pages for Facebook, less have created Twitter profiles and LinkedIn company pages. In general I see them engaging much more with social media across the board more so than taking up networks introduced in 2012.
I definitely see small business optimising their Facebook business pages. This might mean a number of different things, including: pages not groups, customising the Facebook url, creating landing pages and custom pages, using the whole profile image space, uploading more images and videos, and posting more regularly.
Up until now small business have either ignored LinkedIn or created a basic profile and left it. In 2012 small business will realise the opportunity in creating a company page and start to engage with other people on the social network.
Foursquare
Location-based technology can be a bit scary and often seen as just games to small business. But in 2012 they will realise the free opportunity to advertise and advertise to people that are within walking distance to their business. Claim the venue, add a special, it’s going to be that easy.
General Online
The online landscape is wide and complicated to the less-than-enthusiastic. But the majority of us are using it regularly, to play games, to network and yes to find local business. I don’t think there are now too many businesses ignoring that fact, that’s why I believe in 2012 many will actually take that to a new level.
Websites
The small business owners who have been reluctant in having a website build will build; the small business’ that have had the same site for a couple of years will realise they don’t work well for them will rebuild. Small business owners now know that a website will often be the first point of contact you have with a new customer and their first experience with your business must be a good one. No longer will small businesses pay for peanuts and have an ugly website that’s hard to navigate and looks worse than an old Commodore 64 game.
SEO
It’s a topic that is easy to ignore for small business. But in 2012 owners will care where they are ranking in search engines. They will start to realise, through their own experiences, how much potential business they are losing because of their poor search engine performance. Particular concentration will be on meta titles and descriptions, prominent link building (Google Places, etc), and targeting keywords.
Monitoring Conversation
It will be in 2012 that small business will start to realise that people are talking about them whether they look for it or not. This may be positive or it may be negative, but either way small business will become more aware of it in 2012. It will also be a year where small business realise the power of online reviews on sites and listings such as Google Places, Yelp, Eatability, Urban Spoon and for the Aussies, TrueLocal and HotFrog.
These are purely predictions, I don’t profess to backing these up with stats and projections. Some of them probably stem more from hope than logical thinking. Either way, I guess predictions can always be measured after the fact, so I look forward to assessing this in 12 months time.
If you see anything that you think small business will jump on in 2012 or perhaps you disagree with some of the items i’ve listed, please feel free to comment.