Blog posts tagged market trends

What's in store for small firms in the next twelve months?

The face of small business will change dramatically over the next twelve months.

The small business and sole trader community will be closely watching what’s happening in the economy as we either move out of recession or we double-dip. Either way, we’ll be ready to change because we’ve had to already over the past two difficult years.

Firstly, we believe that there will be an increase in the size of the small business marketplace as there will be many new small businesses, consultants and sole trader start-ups coming through. This is because the large corporate and medium businesses won’t grow — they will plateau — and without a doubt they will shed employees. More businesses will go into administration. The public sector will also shrink — and again — shed employees. With the shortage of jobs for teenagers, young adults and graduates they will have no option but to start a small business or become a sole trader.

Career coaching will grow. People with redundancy funds will have to invest with small career coaching companies who run transition courses teaching how to start a small business. The small business creative economy will grow because small business marketing advisers and creatives will be in demand to create the new businesses and market them. The small business financial community will grow because small business independent financial and business advisers will be in demand, not the banks.

The new start-ups will increase the numbers of small business and sole traders in the UK. This may create a busier and more competitive marketplace but will also encourage businesses joining together to work on bigger client projects together.

Successful ways of marketing and selling services through face-to-face networking means that networking organisations such as Athena, The Best of and 4Networking will grow and new networks will be founded.

Secondly, innovation. Existing small businesses and sole traders will have an opportunity to grow by taking on more business.

This will take the shape of:

• having more than one business
• outsourcing to trusted suppliers in strategic alliances
• increasing revenue from networking marketing opportunities aligned to an existing business
• innovating products and services
• creating passive income streams that work 24/7/365, such as e-books and e-courses.

With the arrival of younger entrepreneurs in the small business marketplace, many more innovative products and services will come to market – and quicker

Traditional ways of purchasing traditional goods and services from the multiples will be challenged and changed by the hands of the small business community.

Small business and sole traders will continue to embrace the use of social media and blog sites to promote themselves. Promotion through social media optimisation (SMO) suits the speed of the small business marketplace. SMEs can deliver useful and regular new content into our potential customers’ smartphones and into the search engines at the drop of a hat.

Small firms can control multiple business communications with a preferred social media dashboard such as ping, tweetdeck or hootsuite and they will be demanding technological enhancements.

Any reliance on email will change as it is an increasingly slow and outdated mode of communication as opposed to Twitter and Facebook.

Customers will increasingly buy from small businesses because of their values and social responsibility. Small businesses will change to return the favour and buy small business products and services and also buy local too to support the local marketplace.

 

Alison Davey is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and runs Real Eyes Marketing, a London-based consultancy that specialises in advising small businesses.