What will 2014 have in store for your business?
And what will be the Big New Trends to bear in mind if you’re planning on keeping up with changing consumer habits and those fresh marketing strategies that your closest rivals will be engineering?
I always like to plan ahead for a winning result, so I thought I’d begin by asking some of the greatest entrepreneurial minds down at Smokey Joe’s Small Business Bar for their predictions for 2014.
I was a bit disappointed by the results, to be honest. I was hoping for something a bit more profound and insightful than this kind of stuff;
“I’ll get a year older but no wiser.”
“People will keep on buying things from other people who will be trying to sell them things.”
“Some prices will go up, whilst others will go down. But mostly they’ll go up.”
“You will see a tall dark stranger with letters in his name.”
“The human race will become conquered and enslaved by a race of invading aliens with faces that look a bit like giant pancakes.”
Hmm.
I was almost ready to give up on the whole idea, when Smokey Joe pulled me to one side and told me that he might be able to set up a meeting with one of his oldest friends who always seems to come up with the right answers.
This guy is a mysterious and wise business guru who harnesses the ancient secret powers of the universe from his little shack on top of an invisible mountain.
If you’ve been following my posts on Facebook, you may already know that this guy cooked up a very curious and slightly impossible Advent Calendar, and I’ll be opening a new door every day on the Martin Print Facebook Page during the countdown to Christmas…
So, I jumped at the chance to meet this guru in person.
I wasn’t allowed to go to the invisible mountain for security reasons, so we eventually met up a few days later at a quiet table in the corner of Smokey Joe’s Bar.
The guru was certainly a quirky character. He continually fidgeted with his long, wispy beard and made a variety of strange grunting noises and occasional whoops of delight as he consulted his starcharts and spreadsheets and circular graphs on the table.
I’ll not reveal everything he told me on that day.
Partly because it would fill up an entire novel, and partly because a lot of it seemed utterly irrelevant.
I’m not convinced that you need to know about the new ‘hopping hippo’ dance craze, or the next winner of Masterchef Australia, or the video with the clown and the increasingly irritated giraffe that will go viral on YouTube.
So here instead are the edited highlights of the strongly predicted Small Business Trends to carefully consider for the New Year ahead…
Smaller Screens for Your Online Communications
For quite some time now, smaller mobile devices have been gradually developing into the most popular choice for viewing emails and online content.
We’ve already reached the stage at which over half of our emails are now being viewed first on a mobile device, and 2014 will see a rapid increase in these figures as emails finally evolve into a mobile-first channel.
From a business perspective, this means that our email marketing will become much more heavily focused on the smaller screen. We’ll be looking at simpler, faster, and more responsive email designs which are optimised for mobile devices, as we gradually shift our priorities away from those clunky outdated desktop PCs.
It’s also becoming increasingly important to ensure that your business website looks good and performs well on the screen of a mobile device.
In fact, if you’re building a new website from scratch or completely re-vamping an existing site, it’s now advisable to think about the mobile screen first, as desktop PC versions inevitably evolve into a secondary consideration.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Does your website or any of your marketing material currently feature endless chunks of text with very little in the way of compelling imagery?
If so, it may be time for a re-think.
Text is fast developing into a tedious turn-off, and the consumers of 2014 will expect to see more visuals and fewer words in your marketing campaigns.
They will want to be shown rather than told about your products and services. The rising popularity of image-driven Social Media platforms such as Pinterest is a strong indicator of the changing consumption habits of the future.
If you can possibly condense your 800 words of marketing copy into just ten words, then go for it!
The most popular viral marketing campaigns of 2014 will revolve almost entirely around pictures not words.
Next Time, It’s Personal
In 2014, your prospective clients will expect to see a more personalised approach from your business marketing.
Inappropriate and unfocused marketing will begin to annoy and irritate your audience in bigger ways than ever before.
The modern consumer will need to be targeted with customised and relevant marketing which speaks to them on a personal level and meets their specific needs.
For further insight on identifying and connecting with your true target audience, you might be interesting in aiming your sights on this recent article from the Martin Print Blog.
5-Second Videos Go Viral
It’s now easier than ever for you to create video marketing content, and for your audience to view and enjoy the results at their leisure.
The days of stuttering and buffering video content are now fading into memory, and it no longer takes the patience of a saint to view a short video clip in your internet browser.
As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, video production costs continue to fall sharply, with high-quality video production tools now pre-installed on most laptops. Even Smartphones and other mobile devices are now capable of capturing and manipulating high-definition video content.
So nearly everyone now has the power to turn a humble home office into a sophisticated film studio!
But bear in mind that you should definitely be thinking short and sweet and snappy when creating new video marketing content.
In 2014, the most popular viral marketing videos are likely to last between just 5 to 10 seconds, as many consumers lose the patience to sit through long-winded video presentations!
Even More Space in the Australian Letterbox
Finally, whilst it’s perfectly natural to look ahead to the latest developments in the digital revolution, it’s worth considering the less obvious side-effects on traditional marketing techniques.
As everyone continues to take advantage of the quick convenience of instant online communication, a much older form of communication has rapidly grown in power as a direct result.
Volumes of physical mail will continue to fall dramatically in 2014, creating far more space and prominence in the Aussie letterbox for your own beautifully printed marketing material.
Only 22% of marketing emails are ever actually opened at all, which seems a bit feeble when you consider that a whopping 98% of physical mail is happily opened by the targeted recipient.
Emails are naturally becoming less exciting and less interesting to the average consumer as we continue to get swamped by them on a daily basis.
In sharp contrast, every item of physical mail will now carry more weight and prominence than ever before in Australia’s quieter letterboxes!
So, 2014 presents a perfect opportunity to secure genuine attention and engagement with a well-crafted and professionally produced Direct Mail campaign.
Well, after we’d got all those business predictions out of the way, we spent the rest of the evening attempting to learn the moves for the new ‘hopping hippo’ dance craze that is apparently going to take the world by storm next year.
To be honest, I was struggling with it. I can’t believe that everybody is going to be doing this next year.
It looks absolutely ridiculous.
I’ve got to hand it to Smokey Joe though, he nailed it almost straight away.
I’ll just have to keep practicing if I want to keep one step ahead of the crowd…
But on a more serious note, do you have any predictions of your own on the upcoming trends to watch out for in the year ahead?
And is your own business fully prepared for 2014?
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