The Past Year's Business Marketing Tech Highlights You Should Know
As 2023 wraps up, let’s look back at a few of the changes in technology that most affected small businesses and their marketing strategies.
The sunset of Google Analytics
Everyone knew this was coming because Google warned us for months, but moving on to GA4 was not easy for small business websites. Early in the transition period, switching to GA4 and learning how to set up and read the reports was painful. Instead, many small biz folk hung on to their old Analytics until Google kicked them out. Fortunately, both the how-tos and the actual reports have become easier to understand, so if you were avoiding GA4, it’s time to take a second look. The information is still invaluable to your business.
Increases in privacy and security
As a consumer, you probably have concerns about your personal information being shared all over the internet, just like everyone else. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue and some action taken as well, including the phasing out of third-party cookies on Google and Apple. That’s great for consumers, but not for small biz marketers.
For instance, if you use Facebook ads, targeting and lookalike audiences are less effective because people can opt out of sharing personal information. There are still ways to find your perfect audience, however, either from your own lists or because people leave all sorts of personal clues without knowing it. That’s good news for your business, if not for you personally.
AI for the masses
Everyone talks about AI, and we have all seen examples of what high-profile people are doing with it, but AI as a tool should be embraced by the average small biz, too. It can be used to organize your thoughts and improve your Call To Action when creating marketing materials. The Divi theme in WordPress even includes an AI toolset that will, among other things, generate images to use on your webpage as you are creating it.
The importance of personalization
The personal connection has never been more necessary for successful sales and sending emails that use a customer’s first name is just the tip of the iceberg. Consumers of all kinds want to be acknowledged – and deserve to be. Attention toward increasing diversity, inclusion, and ADA compliance on websites and in marketing is another way to personalize the consumer’s digital experience for building loyalty and recurring revenue.
Staying ahead of hackers
No business is too small to be hit by a hacker. At best, it’s a mess you don’t want to waste time cleaning up, and at worst your business could grind to an expensive halt. The best way to thwart hackers is to keep your website platform up to date with the latest version.
New versions fix any holes that were exploited in the past and at the same time, give you new capabilities that can make your website even better. If you have a WordPress website, they just released a new version in the last few days, version 6.4.2, after starting the year at 6.1 and rolling out several updates over the following months. We create many DNN websites as well and they also just released a new version, 9.13.1, which has been updated throughout the year from version 9.11.
Marketing and tech gurus post lots of good information on their respective industries, but in the day-to-day life of the average small biz manager, these highlights are probably the most useful. While you are wrapping up your year, take note of what changes you should make in 2024. If those changes have to do with GA4, social media advertising, or updating your website, the Sprocket Websites team can help with all of those. Just give us a call to learn more!
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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