The new year is almost upon us once again, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for businesses to reflect on the past 12 months to see what worked, what didn’t, and how they can get their marketing efforts started as effectively as possible in 2024.
Over the last 12 months we’ve also seen certain marketing trends gain a lot of traction with virtually any type of business you can think of. The key to taking full advantage of them involves understanding where they came from. Once you do that and acknowledge why they matter, you put yourself in a position to use them to gain a leg up on the competition. That way, you can also use those 2024 small business marketing trends to lay a foundation upon which success in 2025, 2026, and beyond will be built.
Data-Driven Decision-Making is No Longer a Recommendation. It is a Requirement
It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re running or even the industry you’re operating in – marketing success is all about getting the right message in front of the right person at exactly the right time.
Thankfully, there is less “guesswork” involved in this than ever thanks to the sheer volume of data that we’re creating at all times. According to one recent study, every person on the Internet generates about 1.7 megabytes of new information every single second. When you also consider that about 2/3rds of all people on Earth will be online by the end of 2023, it’s beyond clear that we have a lot of information from which to work with.
Contained inside that data is the key to everything – the true story of what is going on with your audience and what you need to do to reach them. It’s how you understand your target audience more efficiently than ever. It can be your guide as you work to create more relevant, compelling marketing content.
It can even help you understand which of your marketing strategies are working and which ones aren’t, all so that you can increase your overall return on investment whenever possible.
Make no mistake about it: the businesses and brands that tend to be the most successful are those that are using the power of big data at every opportunity. They’re not making choices based on gut instinct or intuition but on fact. Those who understand this will be able to get ahead of their competitors and those who don’t will find themselves left behind. Truly, it doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.
Improve Efficiency By Focusing on the Customer Journey
Another one of the most important 2024 small business marketing trends has to do with improving efficiency by focusing on the thing that matters most of all: the customer journey.
Think about the experience that someone has from the moment they discover your brand for the first time to the moment they make a sale and formally begin a relationship with you. How many steps are there between those two points? How difficult is it to go from one step to the other? How long does this process take?
Once you know the answers to questions like these, you can start taking steps to streamline things wherever possible. This helps to create a better overall experience for customers, which improves the efficiency of your larger operations along the way.
Most businesses begin by using this as an opportunity to break down any silos that may exist between the sales and marketing divisions. It’s important to remember that while marketing teams may be dealing with hypothetical customers, sales is dealing with real ones. Because of that, they have a lot of insight that the marketing teams can use to improve their own efforts – if they have access to it, that is.
By making sure that data is able to move freely across your business and that marketing and sales teams can communicate and collaborate with one another, you create a more efficient process that directly impacts the customer journey as well. That’s just one example of the type of step you can (and should) take in the new year – rest assured there are many, many more.
Tailor Marketing to Speak to People at Every Stage of the Cycle
Along the same lines, one of the 2024 small business marketing trends that many are already having a great deal of success with involves tailoring your marketing to niche subsets within a larger audience. It’s part of the process of “meeting someone where they are, not where you want them to be.”
Again – think about the customer journey as a series of stages. If someone has only just become aware of your business, what type of content would they need to see? They’d probably have a lot of questions about who you are, what you do, and how you’re different from your competitors.
Then, they’d move onto the stage of the buyer’s journey where they’re researching many options. In that case, they’d probably want to see collateral that proves to them that a product or service like yours can solve whatever challenge they have in their lives.
At some point, they would want to compare and contrast your product with those of your competitors as they get closer and closer to making a purchase.
There’s no single piece of content that would be equally relevant at all of these points, so don’t try to create one. Instead, get as specific as you can. Think about what someone needs to read, see, or hear at this particular moment and make sure that content exists and is easy for them to find.
Monitor Social Media Engagement
In the last several years, many brands have learned the same difficult truth about social media. You could have a million followers on Facebook, and it won’t actually matter if 99% of them never actually engage with your brand in any type of meaningful way.
If they’re not sharing your content, engaging in conversation, or advocating for your products and services, are they really a follower at all? Maybe, but only in the most technical sense of the term.
What you really need to focus on as part of the 2024 small business marketing trends has to do with social media engagement. How do you take passive followers and turn them into active participants in this online experience you’re trying to create?
Many young people in particular are looking to social media for customer service purposes, for example. According to one recent study, about 25% of those in the Millennial generation have used various social networking sites for this purpose in the last three months alone. From that perspective, it doesn’t matter how they’re engaging with your social networking presence, just that they are.
If they ask you a question on social media, and you provide a fast and easy answer, they remain a follower. They stay aware of your page and are likely to see what else you’re posting. This makes them more likely to reshape, which raises awareness, which continues to build your audience. That’s why doing anything and everything you can to increase engagement is essential.
Humanize Your Business/Brand
Finally, no list of the top 2024 small business marketing trends would be complete without a mention of humanizing your business and brand moving forward.
What this means is that people don’t just want to be “sold to” any longer. If they want to find out about your products and services, they know where to look. Instead, they want to find out about YOU. They want to know more about why you founded your business and what your story is. They want to know what values you believe in and how you’re addressing some of the things that matter most to them, like sustainability.
According to another recent study, about 84% of people say that they’re more likely to buy from businesses that they share values with. Not only are they willing to pay more, but they’re also likely to become repeat, long-term customers.
If there are a lot of other businesses out there that do what you do, you must rely on the fact that nobody does it quite like how you do it. Today, that means broadcasting your values far and wide and using them as a key competitive advantage for yourself. Failure to do so wouldn’t just be unfortunate – it will likely see you lose ground to other organizations.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
At Surefire Local, we provide business intelligence marketing software that helps you take advantage of trends like those outlined above and more. We do so at a fraction of the cost of the other tools that are available, not to mention what you would spend working with an agency.
The goal of the platform is to help you manage all the online marketing activities that are essential for your business within one simple, easy-to-use platform.
So whether you’re trying to optimize your lead generation efforts, reduce your cost-per-lead, generate more revenue, or something else entirely, Surefire Local’s all-in-one marketing platform is the tool you can use to do it. Click here to contact us today or to schedule your demonstration now.