The latest guide in Lulalend's Business High Five series, The Guide to 2022’s Most Important Trends for SMEs, is an overview of trends that will likely impact businesses this year.
In this guide, your SME will be able to make use of insights on the following trends:
- Adapting to ecommerce
- Embracing cashless payments
- The growth of the Gig Economy
- Adopting Artificial Intelligence
- Keeping up with video marketing trends.
Adapting to ecommerce Online sales still represent an untapped opportunity for many SME owners to attract and retain customers efficiently and at scale. Ecommerce has been growing in popularity throughout 2021, due to permanent shifts in our shopping behaviour resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This will continue growing in 2022.
The value of ecommerce transactions in South Africa is expected to grow by 150% to R225bn by 2025 thanks to these market shifts.
Embracing cashless payments Trend in the same direction as your customers and offer them modern payment solutions. While cash flow is definitely king for business, it doesn’t always have to be hard cash. Now more than ever, businesses need to be prepared for cashless transactions.
The growth of the Gig Economy The workforce is constantly evolving and a major trend right now is the growth of freelancers (or ‘the gig economy’ as it’s sometimes known). More people are opting to make a living outside of a traditional 9-5 role and this trend will continue growing.
Adopting Artificial IntelligenceAI is now available as a service. Making it more accessible to SMEs because they no longer need to worry about developing their own infrastructure to benefit from it.
AI has a vast range of potential uses, from personalised recommendations to marketing messages to customers and automated real-time responses to queries.
Keeping up with video marketing trends Marketing techniques are perpetually changing. Keeping up with the latest trends needs to be a priority for you in 2022.
Approximately 84% of people say a brand’s video has convinced them to buy a product or service. While 54% of consumers say that they want to see more video content from a brand or business they support.
Download the full SME Guide here.