Small businesses often face different market trends than the larger organizations. They often have budget constraints to work on business expansion and have to follow the trends very closely. They need to be updated on the changing consumer tastes and preferences to offer exactly what’s in demand.
2021 has so far been better for small businesses as compared to last year. But everyone is still waiting for things to get back to normal. Organizations that have been quick in adopting the new norms and the ‘new normal’ trends have survived better. But it has taken time for most small businesses to maintain their interactions with customers, as the changing trends require several steps to be taken to be correctly understood.
Lately, new opportunities have opened up as small business trends to prep up more in-person interactions with customers. Still, the remote operations cannot be forgotten entirely, at least until the end of this year.
Some of the typical current business trends have been a rise in digital marketing practices, increased HR regulations, and tapping into AR and VR technologies.
If you are running a startup firm or a small business and would like to know the latest trends that have surfaced during the ongoing pandemic, you have come to the right place. In this post, we will discuss eight small business trends to look out for in 2021 and probably in 2022.
8 New Small Business Trends
There are 8 trends in small businesses that have recently been observed, ever since the world’s economies have entered the ongoing pandemic. For a company to continue making sales, it needs to be aware of the business trends today.
1. More Remote Work
The first on our list of small business trends is more remote work. While some employees have had a hard time adapting to the routine of working from home, many others have become used to it and have started liking it. They feel the freedom of being able to wake up late and have flexibility in their working hours. After enjoying this freedom for a while, they are not yet ready to join their office full time.
small business trends
According to [a survey](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-survey.html#:\~:text=Over%20half%20of%20employees%20(55,said%20the%20same%20in%20June.), more than 50% of US employees prefer to continue working from home, at least partially, if not entirely, as the pandemic ends. Other studies have revealed that remote workers display more productivity when they don’t have to commute to their workplace every day. The time saved in traveling back and forth from work can be spent doing more work from home, which causes a rise in remote productivity. On top of that, when remote teams are given further support by supplying speedy internet connections and allowing flex time, they can perform at their optimal levels and produce great results. Therefore, more remote work is among the top business trends for 2021 and beyond.
2. AR and VR Getting Common
The next among the latest small business trends observed this year is the embracing of AR and VR. As more and more job positions are vacant for remote workers, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) bring exciting boosters for businesses. They act like the “try before you buy” policy and enhance collaboration among the remote working teams.
Experts say that the VR market will grow and expand ten times by 2026 and be worth $184 billion. They also say that a large part of this growth will be observed by the end of this year. The trending small businesses can get ahead of this curve by updating their apps and websites to allow online shoppers to see how their products look. These technologies can also be adopted at the product development stage to get ahead of the competition.
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The good news is that you don’t need an expert team of highly skilled technicians to adopt these new small business trends. You can simply try out the Spart AR of Facebook or the AR Quick Look by Shopify for free and have a dreaming session with them to discuss implementation.
3. Digital Marketing On The Rise
Social media marketing and other forms of digital marketing are expected to catch up speed among the small business trends this year and the next. Remote work is expected to continue even after most economies reach the ‘endemic’ phase. Consumers realize that they actually enjoy online shopping, curbside pickups, and home entertainment activities. They look into social media for adverts and sales offers to grab all such opportunities.
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Therefore, new small business trends include marketing and promoting products and services online. Trending small businesses keep coming up with different and creative digital marketing ideas. Most of them have adopted a multi-channel digital marketing approach. More budget is being allocated by brands for establishing their presence and existence online.
Common business trends today include starting a YouTube channel to promote a brand, using influencer marketing on social media, hiring remote and professional content writers for guest posting and blogging, and learning more about search engine optimization. These are all digital marketing tactics that are gaining momentum faster than ever before.
4. More Paid Placement Advertising
Paid placement advertising is also gaining momentum like the other small business trends mentioned above. More video marketing is used in paid ads that help maintain the attention of the audience longer. Targeted ads are going to stay in demand and practice for a long time.
The paid placement ads, also known as the pay-per-click ads, make you appear and rank higher in search results by bypassing the organically ranked posts. This is powerful, as it puts your content right in front of the consumers searching for the kind of products you sell.
5. Personalization Through AI
For the past many years, small businesses have faced the problem of having impersonalized sales processes. Customers have to browse vast amounts of data on websites, in emails, via chatbots, and on phone calls, which keeps them at arm’s length from getting accurate information about a small business. Personalization through Ai has allowed them recently to install chatbots on their websites to give direct access to customers to their customer support teams.
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This problem can be solved by Artificial intelligence (Ai), which has become one of the new small business trends this year. Ai allows businesses to communicate one-to-one with their customers instantly. Since Ai has become more affordable lately, small business trends are geared towards applying this technology to their regular business operations. Licenses have become available for small businesses to start using different Ai tools.
6. More Female Small Business Owners
The global recession brought about by this pandemic has spurred new business growth in many parts of the world. One of the most noticeable small business trends for 2021 has been the number of new companies registered by female business owners. There are about 12.3 million small businesses owned and started by women in the US, and the figure is multiplying.
7. Alternate Funding
As we move towards the end of 2021, trending small businesses are expected to take advantage of alternate funding sources, such as venture capital, angel investors, grants, crowdfunding, etc. Small business trends are appearing to steer away from the traditional business loans, which used to be the primary source of funding for most businesses in the olden days.
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8. Farewell to Covid-19
The number of daily Covid-19 cases are observed to drop in most parts of the world now. A significant portion of the population in many countries has now been vaccinated. This will also have an impact on the upcoming small business trends.
As we return or hope to return soon to the regular business routines, the trending small businesses will take some time to adjust. While many aspects of our personal lives will probably return to the pre-Covid status, businesses will take time to shift their operating mechanisms in the previous ways.
Some small businesses have found new, creative, and more productive ways to take advantage of the Covid-19 policies. They may want to continue part of their business operations in those ways. Others might consider going back to the older ways entirely. Depending on the phase a business is at and how it allocates its budget, we are yet to see some new small business trends arise as we approach the end of this pandemic.
Businesses that hold on to the pandemic practices in 2021 and beyond might benefit from maintaining a two-fold approach to running their operations. For instance, a company that has hired professional and skilled remote workers may not want to eliminate them for certain positions or tasks. But at the same time, they may want to hire some new in-house staff who can take care of other operations once their offices are allowed to open.
These were several small business trends as observed in this year. As you may have noticed, all these are related in one way or the other to be able to run your business online. The primary asset for any business to be able to operate online is a professionally developed website.
If you agree with that, you can join the club and become one of our thousands of users on Strikingly. Starting a simple website on Strikingly is absolutely free and takes only a couple of hours to be up and running. Once you sign up for a free account with us, you will be directed to various ready-to-use templates. You have to select one of those and start keying in your website content using our drag-and-drop feature. You wouldn't need to write a single line of code, and your awesome landing page will be ready in no small business trends time and completely free of cost!
