How to Grow Your Business in 2022
Business planning has been a difficult task over the last few years, to say the least, and many executives will be looking to 2022 as an opportunity for growth. As the pandemic begins to subside, the time has come to start planning for 2022 in earnest with the new rules of the game in mind.
In essence, we’re talking about building a resilient and robust business strategy to act as your roadmap throughout the year. Researching and solidifying your market positioning and competitive advantages will form part of the backbone of your strategy, along with attainable — but challenging! — goals and KPIs.
Equipped with your goals for business growth, you can begin to explore the trends set to shape 2022, and how your business can adapt in advance of and throughout the year ahead. Below, we’ll cover some of the most important things to consider as you look to grow your business in 2022.
The Power of Customer Experience
Customer experience has rapidly become one of the most impactful areas of investment for businesses, and it’s set to play a huge role in helping you to grow your business in 2022. If your customers (or potential customers) have amazing interactions with you across your channels, through to purchasing and beyond, they’re far more likely to make a repeat purchase, recommend you to their friends and family and even pay more for their experience.
Of course, with big rewards comes a lot of work, so to develop a truly exceptional customer experience, you have to know your customer inside and out. The more information you have at your disposal, the better informed your decision-making will be. Spend time understanding things like:
- Where does your target audience spend their time online? Are they racking up the hours on Twitter, or do they prefer watching YouTube reviews?
- What adaptations made during the pandemic would they want to keep, even after things go back to normal? For example, will curbside pickup be used just as often even as people start to shop in stores as well as online?
- Are there any current pain points that you aren’t addressing, but easily could? For example, retailers might be able to add new sizes to their range, or mental health clinics could offer a new type of treatment.
Collating answers to these questions (and other similar audience signals) will give you plenty of fuel for your marketing activities and business decisions for the upcoming months.
Supercharging your Marketing Strategy
Whether you’re aiming for more sales, increased awareness or new business partnerships, your marketing strategy will play a huge role in helping you to grow your business in 2022. Online channels in particular should be an area of focus, especially since consumers have been spending more time online since the beginning of 2020.
Using the audience signals you’ve already collected, you should be tailoring your marketing to meet your prospects on the channels where they’re currently spending their time online. A rigorous SEO strategy, for example, will build your authority within your industry, making sure that your business is amongst the first that your audience sees when searching for relevant information on search engines like Google.
Getting a conversion often isn’t the end of the line for a customer. For many businesses, repeat purchases and brand loyalty are a much more lucrative ending point. Nurturing these customers, and even your leads, through personalised email marketing campaigns and thoughtful social media content can delight and engage your audience, keeping you front of mind for when they’re ready to purchase again.
Sometimes, a conversion can be driven by the right message appearing at the right time, in front of the right person. Paid advertising like PPC gives you the control to make sure your ad is as relevant as possible to a user when they’re searching for your product or service. Through a mix of audience targeting, automations and creative copy, you’ll be able to narrow down your audience and focus solely on the people who are most receptive and ready to convert, at the exact moment that it counts.
Additionally, make sure you’re matching up the right messaging to the right channel. Consumers are expecting a more personalised experience from retailers, and this means that they want to see marketing messages that make sense for them based on where they are in the consumer journey, and the channel they’re using.
Creating and executing this kind of laser-focused marketing strategy can be difficult, but with the help of an experienced digital marketing agency, you can get support across all areas of your marketing strategy to drive performance.
Returning to Digital Transformation
Most businesses began working towards digital transformation around 2019, but plans were either quickly escalated or swiftly abandoned as businesses were forced to adapt to the pandemic. Two years on, and with plenty of lessons learned, it’s time to revisit and complete that transformation.
Traditional brick-and-mortar faces the biggest shake-up here, with research suggesting that business executives are conscious that increasing customer demand for online purchasing and services will stick long after a return to “normal”. If you’re still wedded to running brick-and-mortar shopping, it’s time to consider how to adapt to the online market. This doesn’t mean the death of in-person retail, as has often been lauded by doomsayer marketers, but rather a shift towards creating an experience for shoppers, as well as experimenting with new technologies.
Mobile optimisation is another important aspect of your digital transformation that will need attention. Consumers have been spending more time using their phones and tablets over the last two years, so ensuring that your site is ready and optimised for mobile visits is a crucial step if you want to see growth in 2022. Not only this, but Google’s Core Web Vitals update has also meant that, if you want to see your site performing well on the SERPs, you need to ensure your mobile experience is up to scratch.
Education, Education, Education
The Inbound Marketing Methodology has been growing in popularity over the last few years and it’s easy to see why. Ads are everywhere you look, and the consumer has become desensitised to the out-and-out hard sell. Building a relationship with a new or potential customer now means something completely different: it means educating, and positioning your business as the sage advisor to your audience. You’re here to help, both through the product or service that you’re offering and through the content you create.
Thoughtful, engaging content that is designed to educate your audience will do wonders when it comes to reaching your growth goals. This content is providing added value for both existing and potential customers for free, as well as providing a useful hub of everything they might need to know about your offering. By building trust, educating your audience, and creating additional value, you’re developing a relationship that goes beyond a single conversion. Instead, you’ve cultivated loyalty and (hopefully) brand evangelists who can spread word of mouth marketing on your behalf.
Looking Beyond Your Niche
Staying on top of your own industry trends is an important task, but there’s also a lot to be learned from other adjacent industries, as well as overall marketing trends. Design trends, for example, might not be important to know from a business operation standpoint, but will play more of a role when it comes to marketing your offering, producing new assets and keeping your brand looking modern and fresh.
You can also keep an eye on your competitors’ activity, as well as similar businesses in other niches. Knowing what your competitors are up to gives you a roadmap for improvement: you know what baseline you need to hit in order to perform as well as them, and you know where you can aim for so you can stand a cut above the rest.
What this all comes down to, once again, is building a robust picture of the market you’re operating within. Paired with your consumer and audience data and your business data, you’re armed with an in-depth playbook for growth that’s fueled by data and insights that will prove invaluable over the year. To be an industry leader, you’ll need to rely on these insights to support your strategies and decision making and see continuous improvement.
2022 brings a whole host of new opportunities for businesses to grow and expand, even beyond the ones we’ve outlined here. To stay ahead of the curve and succeed, you’ll need to make sure your business remains agile; able to adapt to changes in consumer behaviour and the industry landscape quickly and efficiently.
Working with an expert digital marketing agency can help to give you the edge that you need to reach your goals. Digital marketers are built to live and breathe consumer behaviour and the latest trends, so they’ll be able to support and guide you, whether you’re seeking to build awareness, increase your sales, and more.
About the Author: Larry Kotch is the co-founder of The Brains, an award-winning digital marketing agency in London. Ranked #3 in B2B Marketing’s Global 30 under 30, Larry leads a dedicated, remote team of talented digital marketing professionals.
