As the new year begins, many marketers and business owners are setting their sights on the horizon. 2021 was a force to be reckoned with, with new trends popping up faster than ever.
No matter your industry, knowing what trends to pick up or the ones to pass can save time, money, and grow your business.
Here is the breakdown of the most important marketing trends to use for your small business in 2022.
Mobile First Everything
If your business hasn’t adopted a mobile-first mentality, you may get left behind in 2022. With nearly everyone owning and using smartphones, optimising your business for mobile is essential in 2022.
According to a report from Hitwise, nearly 60% of all online searches are now carried out on a mobile device, with some sectors (Food and Beverage) reaching 72%. If you haven’t adopted a mobile-first mindset for your business, it’s time you do. For small businesses, ensuring you have a mobile-friendly web design is ideal for your business.
Here are tips to optimise your website for mobile:
- Speed: Speed is important for any visitor, but ensuring that your page loads quickly on mobile is necessary for any business. Lazy-load images, and prioritise your site to load the most important features first.
- Less is More: Don’t bog down your home pages with large graphics, videos, and other additional content on major landing pages. This content kills your load time and may not display correctly on mobile. Instead include this content on learning more pages where the user is more likely to engage with them instead of on your landing pages.
- Use Mobile-Friendly Designs: There are mobile designs and themes made for the perfect mobile experience. Choose less bulky themes and designs for mobile pages for fast sites that are easy to navigate from a phone screen.
Whether it’s your social content, website, or even Google listings, mobile optimisations are one of the most important ways to reach potential customers. From social media, seamless shopping, and your website everything that is digital should be optimised for mobile in 2022.
Video
If you have not integrated video content into your business, your social media strategy needs a revamp. No matter the industry, video content has taken the world by storm. With the rise of Tik Tok, Instagram reels, YouTube, and more, video content is king.
In a recent Instagram Live, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri shared that video is “driving an immense amount of growth online for all major platforms” and stated that video will be a key focus area for Instagram over the coming months.
So why should your business integrate video content? Engagement and exposure. Videos on Instagram generate more engagement than any other content type. Tweets with video see 10x more engagement. Businesses have exploded with orders overnight by jumping on TikTok or using reels to promote their brand.
How to Make Video Content For Your Business:
- Have A Video Schedule and Strategy: Know what video types would work for your business, and plan to create and post video content at least 1-2 times a month, and stick to your plan.
- Test And Trends: Don’t be afraid to try varied content. From challenge videos, highlight reels, or even the trending audio clips, these are all ways for your brand to be engaging and stand out from the crowd.
- Film High-Quality Footage: Filming high-quality video can be easy! With the right smartphone you can take beautiful footage, but don’t be afraid to invest in some lights, tripods for more professional-looking footage.
- Add Text or Subtitles: Many social media apps make it easy to add captions, and many prefer the captions approach to better read or understand the video itself. Make sure that the text is legible by using the right colours and fonts for easy reading.
Creating video content for your business does not need to be difficult or time-consuming. Whether you decide to do detailed videos with clean transitions or just hop on the latest TikTok trend, videos are a necessity for exposure for your business in 2022.
SEO In 2022
While video and mobile-first sites are top trends, one of the best ways to build your business in 2022 is optimising your SEO. While many of the SEO best practices continue to dominate, many small businesses owners still don’t have an SEO strategy in place.
SEO simply stands for search engine optimisation. For small business owners, this can mean tweaks to your website that makes it easier for you not only to rank on the first page of google but drive clients to your website.
Opt-In Monster made this quick guide of the 10 most important ranking factors:
- A secure and accessible website
- Page speed (including mobile page speed)
- Mobile friendliness
- Domain age, URL, and authority
- Optimised content
- Technical SEO
- User experience
- Links
- Social signals
- Real business information
How well users can navigate your site, find the content they were looking for, and how well your domain rating plays a role in how well your site can rank for important keywords. Building links to your site and building authority in subjects is important so be sure to continue to improve your content, links, and website for a clean SEO experience.
While how big a role factors play in your business is unknown, having a solid SEO for your website is important. Google has gone on to say that customer experience, and page experience are extremely important, so making sure your site stacks up to industry standards is important.
Summary
Like looking into a crystal ball, no one can be 100% sure what the future holds. Whether it’s a new fashion or marketing strategy, trends can blow up overnight. Marketing can be a blend of trial and error to get the trends right.
No matter your industry, these are the top 3 marketing trends for small businesses in 2022:
- Mobile-first content
- Social video
- SEO in 2022
