This post is in two parts; today we will look at different market trends that could affect your business.
The next post will examine ways to plan to take advantage of opportunities or protect your business against adverse trends.
Earlier this year your small business may have been experiencing great sales and profit and the year looked like being one of the best for your business.
Then all of a sudden there are problems with worldwide credit and even then you may think, well I have a local business so it doesn’t really affect me.
As time goes on and the problem spreads, it then becomes obvious that this problem actually could affect your market and business.
What do you do…panic or calmly put in place a plan you had developed for your small business marketing to handle this kind of problem market trend.
One of the key aspects of successful marketing is actually knowing what market trends could impact your market and therefore your business in the future.
If you identify the market trends that could have a positive or negative impact on your market, then it is easier to plan for these changes. Being aware of the market trends also can give you a competitive advantage.
Identifying potential opportunities before your competitors helps you to identify how you can better meet the needs of your key customers. For example, if you work in the building industry and home loans are not being given out because of the credit crisis, then the demand for new homes or renovations are likely to decline and this will could affect your business.
Examples of market trends:
- Changing customer needs, such as increasing or decreasing product or service usage in our market
- Changing demographics, such as the trend for children to stay at home longer
- Pricing, such as a market trend to discounting
- Technology, such as the increasing use of internet usage and online purchasing
- Economy, such as interest rate changes
- Global factors, which are changes in the world economy
- Social factors which are changes in social behaviour such as online networking
- Communication/Media such as the increased use of social media by certain customers
- Cyclical such as housing demands will affect the construction market
Tips:
- Identify the most important trends you think are important to your market as you will find that some are interesting but unlikely to impact your market. This may mean that over the next year only two market trends are worth examining.
- Look at what is happening overseas as some changes in trends may be a year ahead in another country but could be significant in time to your local market
- Think about your business partners’ or suppliers market as they may indirectly or directly be affecting your market
- Keep it simple if you have not looked at this before and don’t over analyse as you are likely to have an instinct about the important market trends
Share with us what market trends are important to your market.
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