Keep an eye on these small business trends and predictions this year.
With 2020 in the books, small businesses are optimistic that 2021 will be a brighter year. While the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet gone for businesses across the U.S., that optimism is buoyed by the distribution of vaccines. Although the pandemic has been front and center since early last year, there are other trends on the horizon for entrepreneurs to watch as well.

Business News Daily connected with experts in finance, marketing, tech, and human resources to find out what small businesses should expect in 2021 and how to take advantage of these trends.

Branding is the process of defining what your business stands for, crafting the positive impression you want associated with your products or services, then infusing those elements throughout your entire organization and marketing efforts. Branding your business differentiates you from your competition, helps identify you in an often-crowded market, and enhances emotional connection and customer loyalty.

If you are a business owner who has yet to consider your brand and branding strategy, now is the time.

4 Types of Business Communication

1. Internal upward communication
Internal upward business communication is communication that comes from a subordinate to a manager or an individual up the organizational hierarchy. Every leader should enable information to flow upwards in order to have a true understanding of the company’s operations.

Internal upward communications usually include surveys, feedback, forms and reports that employees deliver to their managers or team leaders.

For example, a marketing report may include statistics such as total website visitors, social media engagement or total leads generated.

2. Internal downward communication
Internal downward communication flows from a superior to one or more subordinates. This type of communication might be in the form of a letter, a memo or a verbal directive.

When communicating with employees, leaders should keep communication professional and clear. An example of this type of communication may include a memo regarding a new company operations procedure such as safety requirements and new regulations.

3. Internal lateral communication
Internal lateral business communication happens among employees in the workplace. Today, there are many different ways employees can communicate: chats, messaging, email, employees communication software solutions.

This type of communication can be within or among departments and it happens more regularly than other types of business communication. Moreover, frequent communication among employees plays a crucial role in employee engagement and productivity.

4. External communication
External business communication is any communication that happens with external parties such as customers, prospects, vendors or partners.

Unlike all the internal business communications types, external communications happen on a less regular basis.

There’s no denying it—today’s world moves to the beat of a digital drum. With the dawning of Web 3.0 and the metaverse in motion, now is a crucial time for businesses to embrace digital transformation.

Did you know? Spending on digital transformation is likely to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2025 as businesses across every possible sector update their internal strategies and processes for success in the modern age.

With an ever-expanding choice of channels and touchpoints to explore, marketing is one of the most vital catalysts for growth in the age of digitalization. Digital marketing transformation is no longer an organizational bolt-on—now it’s a crucial component of commercial survival.

Despite this fact, there are still many roadblocks to digital marketing transformation. These issues or ‘push backs’ stunt organizational growth and put brands at risk of being left drowning in the digital dust.

But, what are the roadblocks to digital marketing transformation, exactly? Let’s take a look.

An effective marketing campaign demands research, planning, time, and patience. There’s a lot of noise to compete with to ensure your message gets to the right people at the right time, so it’s wise to make sure you take the time to plan each step.

If you’ve never run a marketing campaign before, it can be tough to understand all the working parts. There are also a lot of channels to consider and you’ll need to combine the power of traditional and digital media through an integrated marketing campaign to ensure success.

This article will show you the elements and stages required to create and implement your first marketing campaign. Let’s get started!

Do you take a good, hard look at your team's marketing strategy every year?

You should. Without an annual marketing plan, things can get messy — and it's nearly impossible to put a number on the budget you'll need to secure for the projects, hiring, and outsourcing you'll encounter over the course of a year if you don't have a plan.

Event technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past two years, yet many event marketers still haven’t unlocked the full value that tech providers can offer. Data management is a case in point.

The increasing use of event tech has given event profs and marketers access to a wealth of data, but without proper management, it can easily become overwhelming. To get the most from event analytics, event organizers and marketers need tools that leverage two-way integration with CRM (client relationship management) software and MAPs (marketing automation platforms).

CRMs and MAPs can be so much more than registration platforms. When data flows seamlessly between an event platform and the best-in-breed MAPs, event marketers can take advantage of a self-managing feedback loop. This type of data exchange is constantly working in the background to improve the attendee experience with greater and greater personalization while also feeding into the marketing team’s sales funnel with increasingly targeted tactics.

By understanding this process and the benefits events stand to gain, event profs can harness the power of data to unlock personalized event experiences that deliver real value.

A CRM system should be more than just a static database of customer contacts. The CRM should ingest the multichannel interactions that businesses are having with consumers. The offer engine or e-commerce website should be integrated in real time with the wealth of data that the business has about its customers. That means systems that support inventory, marketing, sales and customer service all have to integrate with systems handling other business domains. This is the digital transformation that brands need.

A strong business development strategy allows your business to create strong relationships with promising prospects and generate revenue. If you ask 10 professionals what business development, or ‘biz dev,’ is, you’ll likely get 10 different answers. To some, business development is just another term for sales. Many view it as the process of forming strategic partnerships. Others define it as a marketing tactic.

Business development expert Scott Pollack describes it best: “Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets and relationships.”

Elias Torres is the founder and CTO of Drift, the world’s leading conversational marketing and sales platform. Drift helps businesses connect with customers who are ready to buy. After just three years in the market, Drift has become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies of all-time and was named to the Forbes Cloud 100, LinkedIn Top 50 Startups, Entrepreneur’s Top Company Cultures, Boston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work, and SaaS Company of the Year by the NEVCA.

Listen to today’s episode of Investing in Florida Technology and hear how Elias made the incredible leap from struggling to take orders in English at his fast food job as a teen to becoming Chief Technology Officer of his own company. He also discusses dealing with imposter syndrome, starting with a new company just weeks before the 2008 crash, and the major expansion plans he has for Drift. #marketing #SaaS #tech #startups #technology