Don’t get lost in the shuffle, keeping track of the changing trends throughout the year is imperative to the survival of small business today more than ever.

Marketing trends change direction rapidly like a gust of wind on a cool summers’ night, which makes staying on top of the trends in today’s fast-paced world an extremely daunting task. However, as a small business owner, it is imperative to stay up-to-date with these changes and align your marketing tactics accordingly. Ignore these subtle winds of changes and you will almost certainly fail to reach and connect with your full target market and customer base, leaving your small business in danger of falling off the consumer radar and potentially into failure.

According to the ISED (Innovation, Science & Economic Development Canada) approximately 7000 businesses, both big and small, go bankrupt each year in Canada. As a small business owner, looking at this stat can be staggering and very worrisome, however, there are measures you can take to give your business the best chance to not only stay above water, but to rise up among your competition and thrive as a leader in the marketplace.

Although as noted, trends change as quickly as the wind, as we enter into the next quarter of 2024 some trends hold pat as mainstays. These 3 marketing trends, which have been gaining steam over the last 2 years, have become a must in 2024 and are most likely to help elevate your small business this year and boost you and brand to the next level:

1. Social Media Marketing is the New King – Embrace The Platform

We live in a new day and age, where promoting your business is not as easy as handing out flyers, postering the neighbourhood, or taking out a simple TV advertisement. The game has changed and as more-and-more consumers are looking to the internet, social media has become the new driver for successfully marketing and growing any business, big or small.

Currently, 25.3 million Canadians have a social media account, a number that has grown by 300,000 annually for the past 2 years and only continues to grow rapidly each year. Canadian consumers are seeing the value of using social media to engage with businesses and influence their future purchases. Furthermore, Canadians are also engaging often, as a recent report suggests two-thirds of Canadian social media users access their accounts every single day and most multiple times each day.

These telling numbers clearly illustrate that if you are not marketing through social media or not using it correctly, your small business is missing out on a giant chunk of your potential customer base, putting you at an extreme disadvantage. Engaging with these millions of social media users online through effective Social Media Marketing is no longer a trend, but an absolute must for any growing small business to stay relevant, alive and competitive.

2. The Video Marketing Age – Visual Marketing is becoming The Standard

People watch more and read less across the board, especially when you look at how Millennials consume data. As attention spans wane and time becomes more valuable in our lightning fast society, getting your businesses message across quickly and effectively has become paramount. We are rapidly becoming a visual society, and as videos are much easier for the consumer to digest than reading a blog or article, creating digestible video content to engage and capture your audience is set to be not only a trend, but the new norm.

People love watching videos — almost 50% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week, and a staggering 82% of users watch video content on Twitter. This year, global consumer video traffic online will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic, and Facebook generates a colossal 8 billion video views on average per day.

However, this does not mean that you should upload traditional promotional materials to the Internet and simply hope your intended customers watch it. Instead, you need to target audiences on the platforms they are using, and what better platforms to do so in 2024 than on social media?

Social Media Video Marketing is one of the most exciting marketing trends for small businesses to engage in, as social video affords you as a small business the massive opportunity to level the playing field when it comes to your marketing potential. Not too long ago, it was only the big brands with the giant marketing budgets that were gaining consumers attention, through wildly expensive commercials and elaborate ad campaigns.

However today this is no longer the case, because small business videos can now live right alongside the videos of giant Fortune 500 companies in a news feed, and/or be integrated with them on social media platforms. Through social media video marketing, you can target and engage with the same audiences of the big brands to help you level the playing field and give your small business the exposure it so desperately requires to compete with the big names of the industry.

3. Personalized Marketing is Crucial – Engage With Your Consumer

With more than half the world using email (over 3.8 billion people), email is not a marketing channel that your business can or should ignore. Email marketing through a reliable email hosting service is still a powerful tool at your disposal which is also incredibly easy to use, and one that can give you the ability to reach a vast audience to help connect and grow your small business.

Yes, email marketing is an old method, however, it is not dead. On the contrary, email marketing is alive and well in the form of a new and exciting method with vast growth potential. The old ways of email blasting or other blanket strategies are long outdated and no longer work in today’s marketplace. In 2024, your business will need to find new and fresh ways to reach potential customers to help your small business succeed. Welcome to the age of personalized email marketing.

Personalization is key to email marketing in 2024. No matter if you are segmenting by age, addressing email contacts by name, or customizing your content with interactive features to help user engagement, above all else you need to make certain that your emails are highly attractive to the specific audience that you are targeting.

With the bombardment of email blasting and spam people receive in their inboxes daily, consumers have developed a sixth sense for these outdated tactics and they will not respond to them any longer. If your email does not stand out from the pile and speak to them personally, it — and perhaps even your email subscribers — will head straight to the virtual recycling bin.

Knowing your customers personally and engaging with them is key to small business success in 2024 and will only gain importance in the coming years.

Although the 3 trends covered in this article are definitive keys to unlocking success in your marketing campaigns for 2024, knowing the trends is one thing; implementing them effectively is a whole different ballgame.

Starting and succeeding in business is already difficult enough in today’s ultra-competitive world, do not put your business at a disadvantage by ignoring the trends and/or failing to put them to use effectively for your business.

Ensure you have the very best marketing experts at work for your business so you can take full advantage of the trends of today and unlock your business’ full potential for a bright and lucrative future.

Recognizing and embracing the trends of today will determine whether or not your small business makes it to tomorrow and beyond.

Corey Philippides

Corey is a senior web designer, graphic designer, UI/UX specialist, illustrator, and copywriter with 20 years of experience in the field.