Bonnie Harris May 3, 2021 Small business is known as the backbone of America. In fact, with more than 30 million small businesses across the country, they account for 48% of the country’s total workforce. With this being the case, in 2021, one of the biggest concerns regarding the success of most small businesses is the lack of motivation from business owners to adapt to current marketing trends. This opens up the opportunity for big companies like Amazon to crush small businesses. If small businesses can begin to adapt to digital marketing techniques and utilize them in their business plans, there may still be hope.
Visual search is a perfect way for small business owners to not only get themselves back on track after COVID-19 restricted their ability to be open, but it may even be a way to garner more success than before the pandemic.
In this final installment of our series on visual search, we will dive into how this marketing tactic could be the beacon of hope for small businesses’ fight against the cooperate steamrollers.
Adapt or Die
As discussed in previous blogs, the younger generations are visually stimulated when making purchases. 62% of Millennials and Generation Z would rather have visual search than any other search technology. They want to see the product they are buying, and want visual examples of what that product can do. Now that visual search is becoming the standard for searching and shopping on Google and Amazon, it is setting a standard for the younger generations of consumers.
So what does this all mean for a small business? By adapting to this change in trends, small businesses are able to capture the demographic. However, if visual search is not being implemented into business plans, these small businesses will no doubt suffer tremendously.
We’ve established that visual search marketing within small businesses is important. Now, how do we go about implementing visual search capabilities into our marketing plans? Here are 3 quick ways your small business could adopt some visual search technology.
- Concentrate your advertising
Where an advertisement is placed is just as important as what your advertisement looks like. Having the perfect advertisement will mean nothing if the targeted demographic is missed. As discussed in our previous blog, Pinterest is a leader in the visual search industry and is a great place to start when targeting the younger generation due to its well-developed and easy-to-use technology.
- Make sure images are mobile friendly
Visual search is being used across all platforms. However, most visual searches take place on a mobile device with apps like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. It’s imperative that images are optimized to be displayed on these platforms, otherwise, all your work placing images on your websites could go to waste.
- Optimize image titles and descriptions
Yes, in a blog written about the need to move away from text search and into visual search this is being included. However, keywords in an image will help signal the subject of an image. This means that when a Pinterest Lens user conducts visual searches, your website images are more likely to appear.
These are 3 easy ways to optimize aspects of visual search technology within small business. Although visual search is still in its early stages there are certainly ways to update your SEO strategy to include visual search best practices.
Small Business at a Crossroads
Between the national pandemic compromising small business revenue and small business owners being more resistant to change, small business in America is at a crossroads. If the Mom-and-Pop shops want to stay in it for the long-haul, finding a way to market to the younger generations is essential.
Luckily, with visual search in its infancy and the innovative technology of applications like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, it has never been easier to keep with the trends. Concentrating on advertisements and keeping website images mobile-friendly while optimizing image titles and descriptions are 3 quick and easy ways to stay on top of visual search.
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