Keeping up with fads can be exhausting. Just when you think you can relax, fashions change.
If you’re like me, you just wear something comfortable and classic (and usually something you already have in your wardrobe), and then you get on with your day. In many industries, nothing’s going to break if your personal style doesn’t get updated. And besides, the western North Carolina mountains are where people go to live in their own style.
But when it comes to marketing or technology, staying on top of trends is a must. You may not need an eye-catching wardrobe in Boone or Banner Elk, but if your digital marketing isn’t up-to-date, then your Appalachian small business might as well disappear like Brigadoon into the mountain air.
So here are some basic, versatile, and affordable digital marketing trends we (and Forbes) recommend you add to your small business’s online presence in 2023.
Responsive Web Design
This has been one of the cornerstones of our business since we started more than 10 years ago. As longtime proponents of WordPress web design, we’ve always kept up with the proliferation of online devices—and how to design websites so they look good on all of them.
Responsive web design simply means that your website looks great, and is totally accessible and easy to navigate, across all mobile devices. That means your customers and prospective customers can surf your site on all smart phones (yes, both Android and iPhone), all tablets, any laptops or desktops, and whatever else people are using to get online these days.
So yes, your responsive website will look great on these devices, whether you’re looking at it in portrait (vertically) or landscape (horizontally).
But just as importantly, your website can be used on these screens. Links and buttons can be easily clicked with a mouse, stylus or fat fingers on a tiny touchscreen. Videos and other media will play as designed. With High Country’s responsive web design, your website will literally respond to the device and display accordingly.
Authentic Communication and Original Content
God save us from AI.
Once again, people are trying to make shortcuts happen. If there’s anything you and I have learned as small business owners, it’s that shortcuts will almost always come back to bite you in the bum.
Whether it’s overused templates or the latest trend to computer-written content, inauthentic communication is just gross. It looks lazy at best and exploitative of workers and disrespectful of your customers at worst.
One of the best things High Country offers as a boutique digital marketing company is real human beings who will not only perform your work, but are here to communicate with you, one-on-one, as needed to get things just right.
Not only does this give you what you need, but it means your customers are receiving the kind of honest, human, authentic communication that they expect—and even seek out—from small businesses.
Besides, every time some AI program comes out, there is a predictable and widespread backlash against it about a week later. And businesses that jumped on board have to jump back off again, sometimes with sheepish apologies about how they didn’t know what they were getting into. We won’t let your business look so tone deaf.
Meeting Your Customers Where They Are
It happens, especially with small businesses. Sometimes we encounter small-business owners who got into business for themselves, especially up here in the Blue Ridge mountains, in part so they could call all the shots. That’s great! You know your industry, you know what works.
But when you start demanding that your customers do things on your terms, especially in all aspects of the transaction, you’re going to suffer the consequences of poor customer service. Or worse, no customers at all.
In digital marketing, meeting customers where they are just means that your website, your digital marketing materials, and your overall online presence are finding your customers—and not asking for your customers to jump through hoops to find you.
This can mean targeted advertising, e-newsletters (yes, these are still big!), QR codes, e-commerce options, or even just responsive websites and easy online communications.
High Country Has Your 2023 Digital Marketing Trends Covered
These are big-deal digital trends. But if they sound overwhelming, don’t sweat it. From our perspective as a digital marketing company, all of these trends are easy to implement—if we’re not already doing them for you.
Our website are always responsive. Our content is always authentic and created by our team (and only our team). Our services are personalized to take your customer base into account.
Want to get your small business’s digital presence off to the best start 2023 needs? Connect with High Country today.
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