Usually operating with small or micro teams, they find it hard to promote themselves and take their products to a wide audience. And it is always unusually hard to compete with big brands, their fanbases, and huge marketing budgets. 

But if you are a small business owner, don’t let this deter you from putting yourself out there. You can make a mark and reach your audience even without a big team and a large marketing budget. 

You just need to know what to do and where to put your efforts for the best results. 

With this blog by Kimp, you can understand what is the latest in the small business marketing world and what trends you must adopt to make it big. 

Knowing what works can be a huge source of validation and also be a huge guiding force. 

So with no further ado, let’s dive right in.

Small Business Marketing Statistics – 2022 Edition

While large brands have a lot of room to experiment, make mistakes, and throw money at the problem, small businesses have to take very calculated risks. This safeguards your investment and lets you make a series of good decisions.

That is why we bring you the best insights and small business marketing insights in this section. 

When you think of marketing for your small business – the first question is always what are the must-haves? What should a business not go without?

Well, according to 92% of small business owners, a website is absolutely crucial to their digital marketing strategy, and social media platforms are the most sought after channels for building brand awareness.

So even if you do not have much of a digital presence, you can start building one with a website and a social media profile. 

While offline marketing does generate a sizable interest in a brand, digital is the way to go for small businesses looking to build a brand and grow an audience. Studies show that almost 50% of  the global ad market sees a presence from digital marketing. The demand for digital marketing and advertising is growing and is here to stay. 

Having a digital presence also ensures that you are where the customer is looking for you. 81% of customers look up products online before purchasing and a digital presence ensures they see you as part of  the solution for their needs. 

46% of customers agree that they are more likely to shop from small businesses, so just being present at the right place can be extremely beneficial. 

With organic content marketing being cheaper and easier to access for small business owners, you can easily start to leverage digital marketing today!

Small Business Marketing: A Quick Guide 

Before we get into the top small business marketing trends for you to adopt, let’s take a look at a quick guide our team put together. It is all you need to know to get started.

Leveraging trends is important but for them to give you the desired results, having a solid foundation becomes even more significant. A well-established presence ensures that your content gets traction sooner and customers trust you faster. So how do you get there? 

• First off, it is important for small businesses to look beyond being a company and work on becoming a brand. That means establishing a branding identity, a branding tone/voice, and a cohesive mission and vision statements.
• For your branding and marketing efforts to work, start by understanding your target audience in depth. You must know everything about them, right from age, gender, and other demographics to their favorite brands, values, and idiosyncrasies. You can then connect with them better. 
• Work on your social media branding by establishing a clear branding guide for the various platforms your brand has a presence on. As the audience on these platforms vary, so must the content and your tone. 
• Set clear marketing goals to identify the right advertising and marketing channel for your small business. Based on what you want from them (views, engagement, brand awareness, or conversion), tailor your budget and content accordingly.
• Create a process to ideate, create, publish, analyze, and learn so that the insights from paid media can help your efforts in organic content marketing.

Interested in learning more? Here are some related guides from Kimp: 

• Brand style guide 
• Social media branding guide 

With that, it is now time to jump into the most exciting section of this blog. 

6 Of The Top Small Business Marketing Trends + Design Tips 

Marketing is a wild and unpredictable game. Looking from the outside, you may wonder how it is that all it takes for a brand to go viral is just one single post and why it does not happen for you.

But the reality is that what we see as one hit wonders are just one 1% of the truth. What we don’t see are the consistent content creation campaigns, insight tracking systems, and the willingness to jump on trends at the right time. 

Trending content can be a game-changer, but to truly use those trends, you must know and understand them well. 

So let us take a look at the top Small Business Marketing Trends that can turn the tide for you in 2022. 

1. Focus on local audiences 

The last couple of years have been extremely challenging, especially for small businesses. As it is, these businesses run on tight margins and the restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic were brutal. 

But if there is a silver lining, it is that the customer sentiment is extremely warm towards small businesses currently. People want to shop locally, so with the right positioning and content marketing, you can reach your audience more easily. 

In small business marketing, local marketing is now a trump card. It is the perfect time for businesses to focus on their local audience and optimize their content marketing efforts to this effect. 

• You can start by investing in long form content and tailor it to the needs of your local audience. Target local keywords for your SEO campaigns and center the content around it. 
• Create videos that are relevant to the local audience such as store tours, product previews, and so on so that you show up on search. 
• Repurpose your blogs into infographics for link building and secure backlinks to improve your rankings in search engines. 
• You can leverage social media platforms too for connecting with your local audience. Post regular store updates and product hauls with local hashtags to gain traction. For ads, you can target local audiences on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook by choosing audiences based on geo-locations.

Kimp Tip: Your local audience is not platform-specific which means you need to run your campaigns across platforms. So invest in an omnichannel presence by repurposing your content for various social media sites and blogging sites. 

Check out our guide on content repurposing content here for more ideas you can implement! 

2. Social proof always wins 

What’s the biggest challenge you have as a small business with a customer? It might be that they have a hard time switching from an established brand to you. 

We may know you are worth it but how are you going to prove that to them? 90% of customers get into a shopping process with their mind made up subconsciously. 

So you have to actively work on countering this bias via content marketing. And the best way to do this is to let your existing customers talk to your potential customers via reviews and testimonials. 

Social proof is the biggest game-changer for any small business. Feature it in your ads, social media posts, stories, and website so that customers hear about you from your other customers and not from pre-written sales copy.

Authenticity is the biggest trend in small business marketing and it is here to stay. 

So, repurpose and feature your reviews on your Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, email marketing campaigns, local listings, LinkedIn, Snapchat, website, ecommerce store, and so on. They look great on carousel ads too! 

Kimp Tip: If you can get the customer to review you on video, that is the absolute best. But even if they are willing to share their image or a voice note, you can work with a team at Kimp Video to repurpose them into animated audiograms or videos.

3. Video marketing brings results 

We know you hear this wherever you go, that video is taking over the world. But there is no escaping it and you should try to jump on the bandwagon too. If you are looking for something that can help you reach a wider audience and take your products to the world, look no further than video. 

Customers share video across platforms the most and a Cisco study tells us that in 2022, we can expect 82% of all web traffic to be from video sources. This means that if you invest in videos, you can direct your customers to wherever you want – a lead generation form, ecommerce store, sign up form, and so on. 

Videos rank higher than blogs in SEO, generate backlinks, and most social media platforms are starting to update their algorithms to promote videos over other content forms now. 

But we know that creating videos is a challenging task for a small business. Besides, we know you have a business to take care of and are probably more inclined to create static designs. 

That is why we recommend working with a professional team that can create animated videos, montages, or repurpose your existing content into videos for your business. 

And Kimp Video does it all at a flat monthly fee for unlimited designs, revisions, and a wide range of services including editing, captioning, animations, and so on.

4. Promote UGC (aka User Generated Content)

Remember when we said authenticity is the game right now? Yes, gone are the days when manicured ads with huge productions were the norm and that is what the customers wanted. People, especially those in the Gen Z and Millennial generations, seek authenticity and want to see real faces in advertisements that they can relate to.

This is great news for small businesses which means you now stand a chance to compete with the big brands on a level playing field. 

Promoting user generated content is the best way to:

• Build a genuine connection with your existing customers by celebrating them 
• Attract new customers by showing them your products from an unbiased source 

But how do you ensure you stand out among the many businesses adopting the same strategy? 

• Choose an Instagram Aesthetic that allows you to post unfiltered user generated content on your feed. 
• Curate aesthetic and commonly themed user generated content so that you can incorporate them in your marketing campaigns. 
• Seek out content from your customers by hosting giveaways and contests. 
• Feature user generated content in your social media advertisements for higher clicks. 
• Release a roundup of the best user generated content via newsletters with links to those products for your other customers.

Kimp Tip : Create templates to repost your user generated content and reinforce your brand identity through them. This way, even when the users share it back, your brand catches everyone’s eye. 

Looking for a team to jazz up your UGC game? Try a Kimp Graphics + Video design subscription! 

5. Inclusive branding and marketing 

If there is something that today’s consumers seem to gravitate to more than authenticity, it is representation and inclusion. And for a small business to be successful in your marketing campaigns, you must take notice of this. 

Now, of course, you want to build a brand that is for everyone. But how do you expect the customer to understand if you do not communicate that to them? Yes, you have to show them via your branding identity that you are an inclusive brand. 

How do you do that? Well, people are visual creatures and this means that showing is much better than telling. Create a branding identity that represents people from all walks of life in your target demographic. 

• Start by using stock images that represent a diverse audience instead of people from just a particular gender or race. 
• If you have a brand illustration system, then ensure that the illustrations are of people from all the ages, sizes, genders, race, and economic conditions that exist across your target audience. When the customers see themselves in your communication, they will connect with you. 

But it does not end with branding alone. 

• Go a step ahead and create inclusive marketing campaigns. Include text overlays, closed captions in your videos while also including alt-text for your image posts. 

Small but meaningful steps like these can bring you and customers closer in a jiffy.

6. Social Commerce 

Social media is easily one of the best things to happen to small businesses. You get a platform to reach your customers, showcase your products and services, and form a niche community – all for yourself. Yes, we know that constantly changing algorithm can be maddening but many social media platforms are making strides in becoming more business friendly. 

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook already have the checkout feature wherein your customers can now shop from you directly without even leaving the platform. Talk about reducing friction in the shopping process, right? 
We are also hearing that Instagram and TikTok are looking to expand the social commerce feature and even begin affiliate programs. Not to mention that #TikTokmademebuyit is already a huge thing.

Did you know that Amazon now has a TikTok section to showcase products that influencers have recommended on the platform? 

This is the golden age to be in for social media marketing, so get started now! 

• Start promoting your products on Instagram Reels, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and so on. 
• Build Instagram aesthetics that excite customers about trying your products.
• Team up with influencers to reach a wider audience across social media. 

Kimp Tip: Branding becomes crucial on social media because these are your storefronts now. Create a unique and branded aesthetic for your small business on social media and communicate with your customers visually to cinch the deal.

Grow your Small Business Marketing Campaigns with Kimp

Nothing makes a small business owner happier than making a sale or interacting with a customer. And that is what every small business owner should be doing – building relationships and building a brand. But instead, the current marketing industry has you bogged down with creating, ideating, and even executing many of your marketing and ad campaigns. 

What you need is a partner – someone who can help you with the workload and also deliver quality consistently so that you get the results you deserve. 

Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video teams have been that for many small businesses for years now, and we would love to work with you. 

Our unlimited design plans are available for flat fees making them the best match for small businesses. 
Try us out with our 7-day free trial and you will know what we mean. Sign up today!