Each year holds something different for business large and small. On January 1st of this year, Business News Daily published a compilation of predicted small business trends for 2017.
Ranging from the business climate to technology, these small business trends and predictions attempted to bring some stability and certainty to the year. Stability isn’t always possible, but knowing what to look for in the coming years always helps create a little more certainty.
Below are just a handful of the forty predictions for small business trends in 2017. How many of these reflect the reality of your small business operations for this year?
#1: Businesses With a Niche Will Find Success
“Business success will come from further focusing on smaller, very specific audiences. Going extremely deep with customized messages and specialized platforms to a highly receptive and loyal audience will replace wide approach “shot gun” marketing. [We’ll see] more soft or no ask/call to action marketing focused on community building, experiences and lifestyle over product specific messaging.”
– Kyle Golding, chief strategic idealist at The Golding Group
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#2: Support Services Will Shift to a Freelance Workforce
“2017 will herald a lot of additional services and products that will enable freelancers specifically to have access to credit or additional payment options. If I were an entrepreneur with a service or product that could be tailored to freelancers, I would be looking at how best to service this growing segment of the economy. This segment will only continue to grow and represents the most disruptive segment in terms of growth and innovation.”
– Keisha Blair, co-founder of Aspier-Canada
#3: Small businesses will take advantage of easy payment options
“[Companies] that use newer online payment options such as Square, Bitcoin currency, Apple/Google payment options, etc. have a major edge over competitors. When you’re a young company that was built to begin with on a fluid, ever-changing, Web-based economy, it’s easy to adapt. On the other hand, larger companies, even when they are willing to step out of their comfort zones, have to overhaul larger, more-entrenched payment-processing systems that have existed for years or decades.”
– Joel MacDonald, founder of EnergyRates.ca
#4: Social media will be used more and more as a platform for sales
“You can now buy through Facebook and even Instagram through third party apps. This is great for startups and those who don’t have the resources for an ecommerce store.”
– Joselin L. Estevez, digital marketing and social media director at X Factor Media
#5: Technology will offer the a “paperless office” even for small businesses
“The paperless office will be a growing trend in 2017. In the past, businesses would physically print paperwork to be reviewed, signed and scanned. In addition to hurting the environment, this causes a significant drain on employee productivity. Fortunately, new software tools are being developed that allows companies to securely manage files online. This means improved efficiency at a lower cost.”
– Sofie Knowles, web developer and co-founder of PDF Pro