4 Small Business Marketing Predictions for 2015

There are 4 Small Business Marketing Predictions for 2015 that you can do before you start your own small business. According to Constant Contact gives you some suggestions how to predict a small business before you run it by your self.

Here at Constant Contact, we’re committed to helping small businesses succeed. Without further ado, here are Constant Contact’s small business predictions for 2015:

1. Small Business will “win” the local war

The merging of social and mobile channels is allowing small businesses to grow in new ways. Mobile technology continues to be creatively woven into social networking, such as photo geo-tagging on Instagram and Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” feature.

More than 70 percent of social activity is happening on a mobile device and the idea of “nearby” is embedded into every experience, making it possible for small businesses to capture the attention of consumers as they walk by their storefront.

2. Small Businesses will become “real time” marketers

With social media channels such as Facebook limiting organic reach for businesses in favor of promoted posts, small businesses will continue to rely heavily on email, which is emerging as the one channel a small business can truly own.

As a result, we expect more small businesses will take advantage of the ability to manage their contact list and target consumers in the place they go every day — the inbox. They will also take advantage of the fact that more than half of all emails are now read on a mobile device, making email one of the best examples of how small businesses can adapt to an increasingly mobile world.

That’s not to say social media won’t have a role in helping small businesses reach their audience with timely information. Unlike a national store, which may be removed from the local community, small businesses have the ability to be spontaneous and share timely content on what’s going on right now. 3. Device technology will crack the “context” code

While some mobile device screen sizes shrink (think smart watches and other wearables) user context will grow.

Smartphone apps like Google Now (the Google equivalent of Siri) will further advance local search with predictive search capabilities, sharing results to users by taking into account user location, previous searches, and social circles/reviews to deliver search results outside of a typical search listing.

These advances, coupled with increased usage of wearables, make local SEO all the more important for small businesses. 

4. Small businesses will hold off on mobile payments

This is one area of the mobile arena where small businesses will take a “wait and see” approach in 2015.

Small businesses account for more than half of all U.S. sales and they are not typically early adopters of new technologies.

Square, PayPal Here, Intuit Go Payment, and others have made it very easy for small businesses to take credit cards, so until customers start demanding the convenience and added security of mobile payment services, or the impact of pending late 2015 legislation shifting the liability for fraudulent credit card purchases from the card issuer to the merchant is felt, small businesses will stick with the payments methods they currently have.

Will mobile be the next challenge you decide to tackle?