While traditional media such as newspaper ads are still effective in reaching local audience, it’s incomparable to digital media. With digital marketing, you can create your own advertising campaigns based on your own budget, expand your network globally with 140 characters, and target specific consumer groups that fit perfectly under your desired demographics, psychographics, and geographic. For small business owners, this is key in growing your business. You need to leverage digital tools such as Twitter and Google AdWords to cost-effectively expand your business without putting a hole right through your wallet. If you fail to do so, your competitors will adopt this marketing tactic nevertheless and gain competitiveness over you. After all, businesses today are no longer rivaling with companies locally – they’re combating with other brands worldwide and digital marketing is the best tool to bolster your competitiveness. 

Though I’m not a fortune teller, I can confidently say that Google will remain the chief search engine and one of the largest technology companies globally in 2014. Moreover, everything we do digitally will still relate to Google. Whether it’s watching a cat video on YouTube, finding the closest sushi restaurant online, or downloading an Android app, Google plays a vital role in our digital activities. Therefore, if you want gain prominent digital presence next year, you have to learn and understand Google. You must understand the usage of Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Google’s latest search algorithm in order for you to optimize your digital strategy.

Captivating content is the best way for you to gain online exposure. By producing relevant, useful content, you can increase your likelihood of being found online and shared digitally. After all, Google, as a search engine, is dedicated to help its searchers find relevant content pertinent to their queries. Hence, through content creation, you can enhance your likelihood of appearing on search results and shared across various social networks. 

Young people are the future of this country, as well as your business. By recruiting young, talented students or new grads, you surround yourself with digital-savvy professionals. You can learn how different trendy, digital tools such as Instagram and LinkedIn can help you advertise your brand to your consumer market. You can gain understanding on how you can use new Instagram ads to showcase your product features to consumers or LinkedIn Sponsored Updates to promote your services to other businesses or business professionals. Many businesses such as Smartt and Deloitte are aware of this necessity and are proactively finding Generation Yers to join their team. Other small businesses must also do the same.

Although small and medium enterprises can reduce their costs significantly by having a home office, they’re missing a lot of growth opportunities. Without an actual office space, small businesses may not be able to maximize their productivity as our work setting, attire, and other factors can affect our output. In order to have a professional office without bleeding money profusely, you can rent a co-working office spot at places such as The Hive, The Network Hub, and The Professionals. This allows you to bounce ideas of one another, meet potential clients or business partners, and gain new knowledge. Bouncing ideas of each other is especially important in the marketing field as creativity is crucial in coming up with new advertising campaigns or product features that truly benefit your consumers. Regardless of your intent, working at a co-working spot and fostering your creativity and network will help you substantially in the short- and long-run.