The Future of Small Business Marketing and Operations
This past February, the Intuit Institute for the Future issued a 32 page report discussing the three trends that will affect small businesses over the next decade. Given our focus on entrepreneurship and small business here on the smbZen BizJournal, we found the report to be both interesting and incredibly insightful. The trends are:
- “The Connected World: Small Business Management On My Time, On My Terms”
- “Beyond Web 2.0: Technology Fuels Small Business Formation, Operations, and Innovation”
- “Small Business Marketing: The Mindset from Push to Pull”
In the following sections, we discuss trend two and trend three.
Beyond Web 2.0
One of the dominant forces in software today is that of Software-as-a-Service, the practice of offering software packages through the internet. Long gone are the days where you needed to install something on your computer. The primary benefit of using internet based software services is that they reduce significantly the need for in-house technical staff and consequently, the cost of operating a small business. Since there is no installation, there are also no headaches associated with upgrading software across the entire organization and dealing with unforeseen incompatibilities. Fire up your browser, select your account plan, and presto, you’re all set. You rarely need to depend on anyone but yourself to get up and running. For small business owners, this is key - dealing with the complexity of using software designed to boost productivity often prohibits its adoption in first place. From the report:
Despite the emergence of platform companies and the services they provide to small business, less than half of all small businesses had an online presence in 2006. The costs and technical skills required continue to be a major impediment to small businesses embracing the web.
Here at smbZen we use PayPal for order fulfillment and Wordpress for blogging. Both were free and relatively painless for us to install. The setup unfortunately, specifically the integration of PayPal with our referralZen service and the customization of Wordpress, required a web design and web development skill set. In the coming decade, the elimination of these technical barriers will drive the formation and operating costs of business even lower.
A New Paradigm For Small Business Marketing
Costs for opening a media business for example are virtually zero. Anyone can get a free blog and start a publishing company. According to Technorati, as of March 2007, individuals and businesses collectively launched more than 70 million blogs. People are producing content at a prodigious rate. Blog based media companies are increasingly displacing traditional print media.
And with more individuals leveraging search engines and personal contacts to make business decisions, social networking sites and blogging have become the key to marketing and selling products and services. Those firms that effectively leverage these tools to obtain their target market’s attention will win. Instead of pushing marketing messages out to prospective customers, small businesses need to pull them in through blog posts, youtube videos, and podcasts.
As the digital infrastructure matures and becomes widespread, small businesses - traditionally late adopters of technology - will need to aggressively use new technologies to create, build, and market their products and services. Small business that fail to embrace technology will be under increasing competitive pressure from more technologically savvy firms.
When software and services becomes a commodity, cheaper access to your target audience becomes a competitive advantage. If you don’t have a blog, its time to start one. If you don’t have a social media marketing strategy, its time to define one. Welcome to the Attention Economy.
Tags: attention economy, business ideas, business trends, competitive advantage, entrepreneurship, innovation, internet marketing, media, small business, social media marketing, technology, viral marketing, web marketingComments
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