subject: Top 5 Small Business Marketing Trends for 2010 [print this page] Author: Marijana Author: Marijana
Facing New Year, we all contemplate our shortcomings and try to look for solutions that can make both our personal and professional lives better.This time of the year is probably the best to make some resolutions for improving your small business and making the best out of the year to come. As a small business owner, how will you market your company in 2010? Which channels should you use to get the best return on your marketing investment? With the business scenery changing at the rapid pace, small businesses need to move on from the traditional ways of marketing and embrace new strategies for getting their business noticed. More and more consumers are moving online to look for information about products and services they want to buy. In the following year, not having the small business Internet marketing strategy may just mean a substantial loss for your business. Good Internet marketing strategy leverages many different methods, and you, as a business owner, have to be savvy enough to know how to get attention of your customers and build on those relationships. Here are the top 5 small business marketing methods that can give you some measurable results in the year 2010: Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing has been very present in the past few years but was mostly used by large companies with established brands. Slowly, small business owners are picking up on this trend and using it as a new way for reaching potential customers, since the number of mobile Internet users is growing daily. Mobile marketing is becoming very attractive to small businesses that are looking to reach customers who search for products and services through mobile search. This new marketing channel may just be the competitive edge small businesses have been looking for. Go Local! Local advertising through applications likeFoursquareand Gowala has undergone a rapid growth. Using location-based mobile apps, businesses can do some innovative things such as rewarding those who check in to their establishments frequently. These applications are tools that incorporate both social networking and mobile location based advertising. The coming year will point out the importance of location data, and savvy small business owners will know how to use it to offer special deals and promotions. Social Networks Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Linked In are just some of many social media sites that businesses use to communicate with customers and improve brand awareness. Social media sites flourished this year but their impact was very hard to measure. It is expected that in the next year there will be an increase of strategic social media campaigns that produce measurable results. When using social networks to promote your business it is important to perform the social media content analysis by using various tools to document feedback. There are many free or low cost tools available to help you track your social media success. By obtaining these kinds of data, you can set expectations for improvements. Online Videos Online videos are mainly used for entertainment purposes, but in the following year there will be an increase of videos used on websites as a part of their sales message as there is a huge revenue-generating potential in video marketing. Videos are a great way to promote a new product or a service and introduce customers to what your business has to offer. Creating a short video and featuring it on your company website, or uploading it to You Tube and other video sharing websites is a fantastic way to get exposure and capitalize on this exciting new channel. Content Strategy The success of any online marketing strategy will be based on the quality of the content you produce and your ability to effectively market that content. Online market is getting more competitive every day, and the companies achieving the best results are those that base their strategy around creating high value content. Beside optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously increase your websites content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written with your customers needs and wants in mind, and should also be optimized for the search engines.About the Author:
