Posted by As time goes by, outbound marketing efforts are falling by the wayside in favour of inbound marketing strategies. Combined with the growth of digital marketing, 2020 will be an exciting year for small businesses.
When choosing an inbound marketing strategy, it’s best to choose one avenue and focus on its execution. This is especially true for small businesses looking to scale and grow.
Here are some of the upcoming 2020 inbound marketing trends your small business can use to compete at a local and global scale.
Outreach and Linkbuilding
Creating high-quality content is essential for successful marketing efforts. However, you need to create connectivity with the content and capitalize on the SEO implications it generates.
Backlinks to your content from other reputable, relevant sites will improve your SERP rankings. However, getting these links in place takes time. Using an outreach service to cultivate relationships and create content for backlinks is one of the most effective ways to utilize this strategy.
Research the best outreach services to help you achieve your goals. The service will be able to handle everything while you focus on your core business.
Personalization
Personalization isn’t just about including someone’s name in a targeted email marketing flow. It’s also about analyzing their behaviours to determine their likes and interests to cross-sell and upsell your product offering.
Amazon is well-known for its personalization capabilities. They will not only send you product ideas based on your purchase and browse history, but they will also package offerings and show you what other people with similar interests purchased. This level of customization improves conversions through hyper-focused targeting efforts.
For a small business, having the right integrations in email CRM platforms, or using customer loyalty programs to collect insights is a great starting point for personalization.
Voice Search Optimization
As home assistants and AI become a part of the average consumer’s daily existence, marketers are seeing a shift in search patterns. This evolution is because more people are using voice search over typed search. The difference is that people ask questions conversationally to a home assistant, rather than plugging keywords in a fractured sentence.
For example, if you’re doing research on the best home security cameras, you would likely type something like “best home security cameras.” Alternatively, if you were using Siri or Alexa, you might say, “what are the best-recommended home security cameras?”
For small businesses, starting to reframe content around longtail keywords and questions is an easy way to get ahead of the curve. Include an FAQ section on your website and get creative with your content.
Local SEO
Up until this point, local SEO has been largely overlooked. However, now that Google is putting renewed monetization efforts into Google Maps and is actively promoting Google My Business, small businesses can no longer afford to ignore this opportunity.
For local SEO, you want to ensure your business comes up in relevant geographic locations. This could mean including your address and Google Maps integration. The idea that when someone searches “best bakery,” your nearby business will come up first.
Use Google My Business, to ensure your business details, such as locations and hours, are up to date. Include relevant location details on your website to get an edge on your competition.
New Social Media Platforms
While there’s still a lot of opportunity on Facebook and Instagram, some of the major contenders in social media are starting to feel tired. Furthermore, even with paid advertising, it can be difficult for small businesses to stand out in the crowd.
Take a look at new and emerging social media platforms to reach a broader audience with fewer limitations. TikTok, for example, is a video app similar to Vines that not only has a hold on Gen Z but has very few businesses using it for sponsorship so far.
Look at how you can build brand awareness simply and quickly using new social media platforms.
Choose a strategy and execute it to completion. When you see results, start expanding with another strategy. By using these 2020 trends, your small business can perfect their inbound marketing for years to come.
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