Business Solutions

In looking back on 2009, I think I speak for most of us when saying “we are more than glad to see it go,” but now the obvious question most often asked is “What can Entrepreneurs and Small Business expect to happen in 2010?”

Before you read any further you must realize that all is not the doom and gloom of bad news for 2010, but represent the continued challenges and opportunities presented by the evolution of the market conditions for Entrepreneurs to not only recognize, but quickly adapt their business models by streamlining processes for organizational efficiencies designed to achieve the greatest results and success. Let’s take a look at some important Small Business Trends for 2010.

The New Thrift Consumer: Many things have worked together in a perfect storm to create a new era of thrift in the market including the very bad economy, relentlessly high unemployment rates, and the bursting of the huge housing bubble, as well as many other factors.

Consumers have quickly adjusted by spending less, tirelessly looking for the best bargains and deals, which impacts Small Business directly by making it a lot more difficult to convince consumers to not only spend, but more importantly to continue spending, and we look for no change in that scenario any time in the near future. It’s never been a question that you have to give people as consumers what they want, and the new reality for Small Business is what they want are bargains, bargains, bargains.

The New Employee Class: Another adaptation of Small Business directly related to the evolution of the challenges presented by the economy, is that increasingly employees are being reclassified, both voluntarily and involuntarily, to either part-time or independent contractor status, and whether the case is forced or not, full-time employment accompanied by full-time benefits is increasingly becoming both harder to find, and harder to provide.

With closer examination it’s easy to understand why employers both big and small are feeling forced to adopt this course of action, it simply saves money and increases critical cash flow, but unfortunately as a result it has also created a restless and dissatisfied workforce.

Doing More with Less: Similar to what their customers are experiencing, Small Businesses have to survive on less operating capital, while faced with the increasing pressure from ever growing financial burdens.

There are many various factors directly responsible for this, and all are contributing equally including fewer customers with less to spend, tighter credit guidelines generally making it more difficult to obtain loans, even the once popular use of home equity, and there is no letup in sight as the financial demands on Small Business continue to grow.

Consumers are Going Local: A natural trend finds consumers and their families are increasingly seeing more value and a comfort zone in looking for someplace local when deciding where to spend their money. Additionally, with people staying closer to home right now because of the economy, with families focused  more and more on the local community and the family unit, the fast growing emotional sentiment is home is the best place to be and spend money.

Increase in Green Opportunities Continues: Regardless of whether “Cap and Trade” laws are ever established, there will continue to be a myriad of opportunities in the global green industry market for Entrepreneurs, as demand continues to grow in the global market for products that are both good for the environment, and reduce costs for the consumers.

The Age of CONNECTivity: Not too long ago, online activity and brand were separate and independent of each other with even their own separate departments and budgets, now the trend is accelerating towards creating interconnectivity with new and evolving tools to facilitate and enhance the level of connection. Now it is important to connect websites and blogs to social networking applications including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and others. In addition, applications like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, SocialOmph, and others allow you to filter your new content across your interconnected online presence every time you update your blog.

The obvious opportunity presenting itself is that you can significantly increase your online presence and resulting ROI at much less cost than traditional marketing strategies, and the real challenge is to correctly execute the connectivity strategies and enjoy the successes.

Social Media Has Arrived: For Business both large and small, Social Media has greatly matured from its early development, and now advanced knowledge and understanding of Social Media is one of the hottest and most critical of all online trends, Twitter has become a valued customer service tool, as companies both large and small use it more and more to obtain customer feedback, and in return post information, news and views. Last year businesses around the world learned Facebook is a great place to CONNECT with their niche markets, as Facebook continues to grow exponentially with 50 million new users in 2 months, and recently announcing it has surpassed the 400 million user threshold.

The New Information Sharing Culture: How we share information and experiences has dramatically changed in a relatively short span of time, and looking back as recent as 10 years ago we see that we used to share national experiences, and the nightly national news was one of just a few sources of information content, but that has been rapidly changing, for a couple of reasons. The first is the major fragmentation of the media with too many to count news outlets, websites, cable channels, mobile apps and the like, opportunities to create shared experiences continues to quickly diminish, since as a result of the media fragmentation, we are all experiencing exposure to different informational content.

Additionally, as user-created content becomes easier and easier, peoples willingness to share experiences and opinions has become much more prevalent, and YouTube, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, Flickr, texting, and many other applications including email, all contribute to both the media fragmentation as well as the exponential growth of the sharing culture.

It is vital for the Small Business Entrepreneur to realize that people look for, and increasingly expects to establish personal CONNECTIONS and build those relationships, and the demand for small, localized, and immediate user-created media are what the consumers in the market are looking for.

Welcome to the New Mobile World: The only market that can successfully claim to be hotter than social media is the mobile, and it is red-red-hot. Let’s examine the reasons including there are almost five times more cell phones than PCs worldwide and the gap is widening, cell phones are the favorite product of the younger generations, evidenced by almost no texts sent in 2000, but this year it is projected that more than 130 billion texts will be sent on average each month, all of which means that the red-hot mobile market will continue to present countless mobile options for Small Business in 2010 and beyond.

Let’s look at the new variety of ways the success of small business mobile campaigns can be measured including the number of shakes and finger swipes, the number of blogs, articles, tweets, digs and eyeballs. Don’t forget the number of acquisitions, conversions, calls, responses or purchases, along with the total shopping cart size, consumer recalls, loyalty and recommendations, complaints, and finally check-ins and check-outs.

The Small Business Economy: Last year, 2009, is one we are all glad is over, but will never forget for just how bad it was economically, and this year the economy will continue as the most important trend factor effecting Small Business, with the outlook both a little better and hopefully somewhat more stable.

As evidenced by very recent adjustments to unemployment activity that shows over the past year the number of unemployed higher than what had been originally reported, while at the same time a drop in the unemployment rate from 10% to 9.7%, there has been an increase in Small Business startup activity, and Entrepreneurs through vital innovation will continue to be the focal point and driving force in the rebirth and future growth of the critically vital Small Business economy, and the mantra for 2010 and beyond should be “As Small Business Goes, So Goes the Nation.”

Consider current statistics from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, for 2009 that shows small businesses that number almost 30 million, employs more than half of all workers, constitutes 99.7% of all employers, constitutes 97% of all exporters, and creates the majority of business innovations.

Finally, with unemployment projected to hover around 10% for several months, the unemployed quickly running out of benefits and with less benefits for those fortunate enough to still be employed, Small Business startups of all varieties are increasing, with home-based businesses, one person shops, part-time ventures, online enterprises, partnerships, high tech companies, and other business entities. These are the true Entrepreneurs who, with their innovative and creative energy, ingenuity, drive, and hard work will ultimately lead us out of this tumultuous Great Recession.