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5 Business Trends to Capitalize on This Year
money; show me my money! A good rule of thumb for content creation is you must put out four pieces of good content for every one piece of promotional content. You can, of course, mention what you do as well as how they can find you or get some lead magnet you’re offering. You can even plant seeds about helping them with XYZ, but please stop making every piece of content about why they should buy your stuff and give you money. Just help them and the money will follow. Rule No. 3: Content creation isn’t direct response marketing; stop treating it as such. We all want ROI, I get that. I want it as well, but content marketing isn’t a direct response marketing ad. In fact, too many people want to treat it as such. Content marketing is much more like going to the gym. The first day you go, you don’t come home the next day all ripped. You may even go for a few weeks before you really see any changes at all, and it will take numerous weeks after you see results before others start noticing the changes. That is content marketing. You must make the investment and see it through when no one is paying attention. Continue to create and push out great content while you build traction. If you want to see an instant ROI, maybe go run some Google and Facebook ads, because this isn’t the right marketing strategy for you. If you want to have a machine that produces money day and night for you, even from work you did years ago because that brand-new customer found your video from four years ago and decided to sign up, you should put in the hard work upfront. Push through the low engagement and inability to track or even get a direct ROI. Rule No. 4: Focus on one
episodes, there is a good chance we’ll binge watch the whole season. Be Netflix and break your content into small, easily consumable chunks. Rule No. 5: You’re not publishing too much content; you’re publishing too little content. Yeah, I know your customers don’t want weekly emails or monthly newsletters or a podcast. But maybe they just don’t want to hear how you’re about gum disease because you’re in dentistry. See Rule No. 1 again. Rule No. 6: You simply can’t do it all yourself. There is so much to be done that you should outsource some of the content creation — but you’ll likely need to outsource nearly all of it . Unless content creation is your true passion or you want to be the personality for your business (which I personally enjoy, so I totally get that), you should let the professionals handle it. Simply put, unless you love this stuff, you need an easy button or it simply won’t get done. This is one of the reasons we interview clients and ghostwrite their newsletter content. When I first started Newsletter Pro, I thought customers could easily write one article per month. It took only one customer to realize that wasn’t the case. Unless we wrote the articles for them, but in their voice, this business wouldn’t work. Eleven years later, here we are but literally only because we ghostwrite the content and are really good at it. I’ll talk a lot about content marketing over the coming months. The primary reason is the window of opportunity opening right now that entrepreneurs can jump on so they’ll get ahead of the competition in a way that may not be half as feasible in the next couple of years. Additionally, we’ll take the 11 years of experience we have in creating content for others and expand beyond just digital and physical newsletter content. We’ll help those who understand how important this is for the future of their companies as well as their pocketbooks. We want to ensure this gets done consistently and correctly so businesses have the best possible outcome … but more on that in the coming weeks and months. –Shaun
A famous film director, Frank Capra, once said, “Don’t follow trends, start trends.” That philosophy might work in Hollywood, but it’s a terrible idea in the business world! Sure, you should try new things and get creative, but examining what works for other companies and stealing those strategies for yourself shouldn’t be frowned upon. It’s simply smart business. If a strategy works for a company like yours, odds are it will benefit you, too. Think about it: A business solution only becomes “trendy” once it has brought dozens of companies success. Why would you just dismiss something with that much potential? With this in mind, we’ve rounded up five 2022 business trends that companies like yours can and should try this year. Don’t sleep on these things because of naysayers like Capra! Trend No. 1: Going Remote It’s no secret that many of our
will benefit. Employee retention has been one of the biggest challenges of 2022 for business owners, and the trending way to fight it is by putting employees’ needs first. Pushing work-life balance and offering incentives like quality health insurance and 401(k)s might seem like a drain on business resources, but you’ll save money by having less turnover and not needing to train as many new people. Trend No. 4: Building Community Online Brands that thrive are the ones that turn their customers into communities. Think about Dutch Bros. Coffee’s “Dutch Mafia” or Peleton’s “Stationary Biker Gangs.” Clients won’t leave you if it means leaving their “tribe” behind, whether that’s an exclusive Facebook group or a membership portal. WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, explained this perfectly when he spoke to Small Business Trends in January: “Small businesses are agile and connect with their audiences better than big businesses can. I’m excited to see the formation of avid online communities around small businesses. Such businesses and communities can collaborate better to
topic, or two topics at most, per piece of content. If you have two topics, make sure it is clear how everything relates and works together. A focused, singular topic that is clear, entertaining, and
employees here at Newsletter Pro work remotely — and they love it! During the pandemic, hundreds of businesses discovered the benefits of offering remote-first job opportunities,
create more personalized offerings. This phenomenon also makes way for small- business-driven social change.” Trend No. 5: Automating Vital Marketing
provides value on one level or another is most important. If you have an in-depth subject that needs a bunch of info to explain, make multiple videos to cover each single topic. Think of it like this: If I asked you to the movies to see the latest true- crime thriller but told you it was eight hours long, you’d decline the invite. If I invited you to hang out on a Saturday and watch this new true-crime thriller and season one just dropped with eight one-hour
including flexibility, increased productivity, a more diverse hiring pool, and lower overhead. Don’t knock this trend
until you try it with at least a few employees. Trend No. 2: Hiring Freelancers
Automating your marketing will save you valuable time, make your campaigns more efficient, and help you scale your business. Lead nurturing emails are the low-hanging fruit here, but you can also automate your social
This goes hand in hand with remote work. Instead of hiring new full-time employees, businesses are capitalizing on the expertise and flexibility of freelancers to handle unique or one-off projects. Consider contracting a freelancer for things like website creation, social media management, and IT that are essential to your company but not in your area of expertise. Trend No. 3: Putting Employees’ Needs First We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Your employees are your company — and if they’re happy, your bottom line
media posts and even your invoices. Check out tools like Keap, HubSpot, Hootsuite, Eloqua, ManyChat, and Drip. You don’t need to go all-in on these five trends simultaneously, but pick out at least one or two and experiment with them this year. The results might surprise you!
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” –Isaiah 40:8 ESV
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