Latest Small Business Trends to Look Out for in 2023

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Staying abreast of small business trends should be among the top priorities of any small business owner. Regardless of your industry or niche, if you understand how these trends affect you, you can plan to take advantage of them proactively.

Consider the following small business trends for 2023. If you run a small business, think about how you may account for the following:

Increased Social Media Marketing Spending

Some small business trends of 2023 are unsurprising. Essentially, they may be continuations of trends that have been developing for several years.

For example, an emphasis on social media marketing isn’t anything new. While experts point out that ad spending, in general, may slow or even decrease to some extent throughout 2023, research also indicates that brands will increasingly prioritize social media when determining precisely how to allocate advertising funds.

This is likely because social media marketing campaigns tend to deliver a strong return on investment. If marketers need to be cautious about how they spend their budgets in 2023, they’ll prioritize efforts that consistently tend to be effective.

Consider this as you plan your marketing campaigns. Odds are your competitors will leverage social media to an even greater degree than they already are going forward. To remain competitive, you must generate social media marketing content that stands out.

Greater Desire for Remote or Hybrid Work Options

The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we work in many ways. Most significantly, it ushered in an era of remote work.

Surveys now indicate most job-seekers want the option to work remotely at least some of the time. If you run a small business, offering hybrid or remote work options could help you boost satisfaction and retention among your existing workforce while attracting ambitious job-seekers.

Plan accordingly by considering how you can modify your processes so that working remotely is feasible for employees. Additionally, it would be best if you took the time to experiment with various collaboration tools and solutions.

For example, although employees, if given the option, generally prefer to work remotely, many also report experiencing “Zoom meeting fatigue.” One way to potentially guard against this is to record your screen when completing specific tasks or processes and share the recordings with team members instead of requiring everyone to participate in a meeting.

A Focus on Entertaining Customers

The rise of e-commerce has been disrupting brick-and-mortar businesses for years now. The pandemic has hastened this trend.

Waning interest in brick-and-mortar shopping may have a minimal (negative!) impact on your business if you don’t have any physical locations. However, if you do, marketing experts recommend striving to offer entertaining in-person experiences to your customers in 2023.

How you may do so will depend on the nature of your products and services and the resources available to you. For example, a retailer with a reasonably high budget could use hologram technology to offer dynamic visual displays in their stores.

You might not be able to afford such a high-tech approach. However, you could host small-scale parties, concerts, and other such events at your business. Offer customers an entertaining reason to visit, and you’ll be more likely to make sales at your brick-and-mortar locations.

(Tip: Striving to entertain your audience is a good idea. Consider this small business trend for 2023 when developing marketing content. For instance, with an amusing animated video, you could demonstrate to customers why your products and services are worth their money.)

Greater Personalization

Offering customers personalized experiences is more important than ever. According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect brands to offer personalized experiences. Perhaps more importantly, about 76% of customers become frustrated when brands don’t personalize content, interactions, etc.

These expectations might not be unreasonable. Thanks to AI, gathering customer information is much easier than in the past. Thus, customers expect marketers and business owners to leverage this information accordingly.

There are various ways you can fulfill this expectation as a small business owner without breaking the bank. Examples include:

Segmenting your audience into multiple groups and generating marketing content tailored to each group
Offering products and services to customers based on their past purchases
Engaging with customers directly on social media

That said, you need to avoid overextending yourself when offering customers personalized experiences with your brand. If you’re a small business owner, you almost certainly don’t have the time or resources to offer personalized experiences to every individual customer. Instead, by segmenting your audience, you can tailor your offerings to suit the needs and preferences of the different types of customers you serve.

Small Business Trends for 2023: The Importance of Updating Your Strategy

Business owners who thrive have always been business owners who make a point of understanding the latest trends and how they may influence their business decisions. This is as true for entrepreneurs running major enterprises as it is for small business owners.

These are merely some of the more noteworthy small business trends for 2023. Think about what they mean for your business and what you should do to ensure they fuel your growth instead of hindering it.

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Hanna Abitbul

Hanna is Powtoon's Content Marketing Strategist. She joined Powtoon as a copywriter in 2019, after graduating from university with a specialized degree in marketing and business. She continues to inspire people to create incredible video content with blog posts, videos, guides, and more. Hanna's passions include reading, singing, and caring for animals (#proudvegan). Nothing makes her happier than waking up to her two black kitties who, contrary to popular belief, are good luck!