Many businesses take advantage of market trends to boost sales. But it isn’t as easy as jumping on the bandwagon of the latest craze. You must keep your business on-brand, monitor various data sets, and ensure you don’t become a trend victim. It’s hard to do, but here are some handy tips.
Use Google Trends for Seasonal Data
Google Trends is the go-to app for most people when looking to use trend data. This is because there is a vast amount available and for free. Google Trends is excellent for finding trend data that repeats, which makes it great for seasonal sales. For instance, you can check queries such as “thermal gloves for men” when deciding on your winter stock or which affiliate marketing links to include in your blog posts. You can then monetize links and maximize seasonal sales.
Stay On-Brand
Brand identity is everything these days, and it can take a lot of hard work and dedication to develop a unique voice. It’s important to stay true to your brand voice. Don’t blindly follow trends that don’t match your brand’s voice just for a few short-term sales. This makes you look unprofessional and uncaring about your target audience. In short, all credibility is lost when you place sales over service. Seek trends from relevant sources such as LinkedIn for B2B trends and TikTok for B2C.
Engage Your Audience Based on Market Trends
Knowing your audience is one of the most vital parts of any online business. From blogs to international eCommerce, you can’t really expect success without this. You can hire digital marketing agencies to help, and even use AI tools. Yet you need to remain at the forefront of audience engagement to understand how it works and capitalize on trends since not all trends will work for your audience. And if a trend isn’t compatible, avoid it at all costs or risk losses.
Actively Monitor Your Competitors
It can be hard to keep up with trends, and you will need to monitor multiple data points and sets for predictions and capture. But how do you go about managing this against the time you have? Well, there’s nothing wrong with keeping tabs on competitors in your niche, especially ones more successful at branding than you. If there is something a competitor is doing, think about how you could improve. The trick is to identify their trends and make them work for you.
Make Sure You Understand the Data
As a small business, you might be able to pay someone to analyze data for you, but this is expensive. So you can save money by learning to understand the data you are looking at. Trend data comes in various forms, one of which (seasonal) we have mentioned. Here are more:
Linear data trends
Linear data is the easiest to read and understand and is represented by lines that increase or decrease over time. They can be shallow or steep, indicating downward or upward trends.
Exponential trends
Curves represent trends that rise or fall at an unsteady higher rate. This indicates when something has increased or decreased more or less over time compared to previous periods.
Damped data trends
This indicates data that rises or falls and stops abruptly, known as a plateau. The rate of Covid-19 deaths is a good example. You can check for this kind of trend right now.
Random trend patterns
Random trends are bad for a business because there is always an unknown variable. This is represented by short and chaotic fluctuations with no discernible regularity within the data.
Cyclical patterns
Trend data is viewed in a series of fluctuations without a fixed frequency. Therefore, you might need to predict what will happen. Share prices and the economy are good examples. Trends and patterns come in various forms. You can use each type to make decisions about trending variables and constants for better and more accurate results. Each data type is representative of different trends, and knowing which ones to recognize will help your business.
See What Niche Influencers Are Doing
Influencers are a great resource for finding out what is happening in your niche or related fields. Just by watching a quick YouTube video, you can get a real feel for what is happening because influencers generally have their ears close to the ground. For example, if a cozy game influencer begins talking about the latest Sims 4 expansion, you should do some keyword research and write blog posts about it, with relevant links to the game via your affiliate program.
Master Inventory Control
Trends can come as quickly as they go, and that means you can be left with too much stock that won’t budge. Imagine if you purchased $10,000 worth of fidget spinners late into the trend; you would be left massively out of pocket. So you must learn to master inventory control to take advantage of trends rather than becoming a victim of them. This is where keen analysis skills come into play and why you must learn to understand data to make future predictions.
Take Advantage of Market Trends with Adaptation
As mentioned earlier, you need to stay on brand when it comes to trends or your image could be tarnished. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use trends. Instead, it is more beneficial to adapt the trend to your own business use or adapt to the changes themselves. For example, trends aren’t always related directly to sales, and they can be industry-wide. Understanding your niche, working with reputable marketing agencies, and hiring blue-sky-thinking employees will help.
Use Previous Data to Predict the Future
There are always lessons we can learn from the past, and market trends are no different. With the right data, you can predict trends. This is relatively simple for linear and seasonal trends but becomes complex with other types of trend data. However, when a trend begins, you can even predict cyclical trends based on previous similar trend data. You can never know exactly what will happen, but you can begin working on contingencies and business plans from past data.
Final Thoughts on Market Trends
Using Google Trends for certain data can help you take advantage of trends, especially seasonal ones. Yet you must learn to read other types of trend data to make decisions and predictions. This can help with inventory, staying on-brand, and audience engagement.
