10 Actionable Tips for SMEs Revealing 2020 Business Opportunities

Here's an unpopular opinion:

New Year predictions sound really cheesy!

Yet again, I fall into the same trap... And oftentimes, they are actually valuable ??

Since I write a lot of long-form content that happens to be evergreen, revising the ongoing business ecosystem is integral to running a successful business. As an agency owner and a business advisor, most of my work revolves around identifying economic trends and discovering business opportunities aligned with the global ecosystem.

Which is why I'm happy to announce this roundup closing the year of 2019 interviewing 10 industry experts who received the following question:

"What is the biggest opportunity you see for SMEs in 2020 and what is one tip that you have for businesses to pursue it?"

Without further ado, let's jump right in and get ready for the trends small and mid-sized enterprise executives and managers have to prepare for and double down on in 2020!

1. Deliver Real Value

"The biggest opportunity for startups in 2020 is to navigate through the business and economic uncertainty that is sure to come given the political environment. Startups must focus on delivering real value to real customers and to be lean and deliberate in execution to keep an eye on their cash. 2020 may not offer a great environment to raise VC funding so a drive towards self-sufficiency is always a good plan."

Alisa Cohn, #1 Startup Coach in the World-Thinkers50 Goldsmith Awards; NYC Exec. Coach to CEOs & Founders; Board Director; Inc.com

2. Strategic Automation

"The biggest opportunity for SMEs in 2020 is strategic automation. Businesses must determine how to use machine participation to accomplish tasks more quickly and efficiently while recognizing what is best left in the hands of humans."

Alexandra Levit, author of Humanity Works

3. Reputation Building

"Reputation branding is the next wave of influence. A business owner or a senior executive that is not known as the “go-to” person in their area of expertise and has little to no social currency will be lost in a crowded market place and even more so when 5G is launched. Competition is about tenfold and we will call the next 10 years “the decade where disruptors were disrupted."

Mary Henderson, Personal Branding & Social Selling Specialist, Founder of 6 Figure Expert

4. Focus on Relationships

"My tip for 2020 is the same tip I've had for 17 years...and the same one I would have offered 100 years ago if I'd been around. It's all about relationships.

Too many new small business owners focus too much on the what, the how, and details of their product and offer, and fail to focus on the one thing that will help their business grow the fastest: relationships - other people promoting them, evangelizing their product, and potentially introducing hundreds or thousands of customers to them."

Matt McWilliams "The Affiliate Guy" | Affiliate Marketing, Recruiting, & Management tips daily @ MattMcWilliams.com & TheAffiliateGuy.tv (Blog: MattMcWilliams.com Videos: TheAffiliateGuy.tv)

5. Optimize Email Newsletters

"I believe the biggest opportunity for SMEs is...wait for it...email newsletters.

Yeah, I know they're "so 2008," but email is the killer mobile experience everyone seems to be forgetting about, and many marketers stopped putting content in the inbox in favor of blogging, so there's a massive opportunity to "zig" when everyone is zagging, and optimize the channel that still yields the highest ROIs for most businesses."

Ryan Deiss, CEO, DigitalMarketer.com

6. Build a Personal Brand

"I’d say establishing a personal brand"

Chanelle Segerius-Bruce, CEO - Business Coach - Branding & Marketing Expert

7. Focus on Top Buyer Personas

"One of the greatest opportunities for SMEs to stand out from the crowd of digital noise is to focus. While others are trying to be everything to everyone, smart leaders will focus in tight on their top priority buyer personas and ensure they are providing the most relevant, impactful, memorable experience possible.

Learning how to hop on trends while at the same time staying focused on the RIGHT things is really the key to rising far above the status quo and crushing even the biggest goals!"

Pam Moore, Co-Founder, Marketing Nutz, Digital, and Social Branding Training & Consulting Agency

8. Provide Personalized Customer Experience

“Personalized, intentionally designed customer experiences provide the greatest opportunities for SMEs to differentiate themselves to succeed in 2020.

86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience (Temkin study) and 1 in 3 will leave a brand they love after just 1 negative experience (pwc study).

Realizing that your customers include not just people who buy your products or services but also your employees, vendors, partners and investors allows you design the experiences that increase their happiness and loyalty and ultimately your bottom line.

One tip to help pursue this is to design personalized customer experiences for each class of your expanded ‘customer.’

Create peaks for employees (allow remote work), contractors (tap the gig economy trend), product/service buyers (design at least one big surprise and delight moment and flip known negatives into positives), and investors (include social mission objectives with regular messenger and social media based personalized communications).”

Roland Frasier, Business Mentor. Principle, Traffic & Conversion Summit, DigitalMarketer.com, War Room Mastermind

9. Solve a Problem

"One tip is the same I always say: your business has one job: solve a problem. Use something like jobs to be done to truly understand what the problem is."

Sol Orwell, Editor-in-Chief at SJO.com

10. Tap Into Freelance And Remote Resources

"One potentially big opportunity for SME's is the continued rise of the freelance and remote market. There is a job force out there that is hungry to work and carries loads of talent. It creates a larger opportunity for businesses to hire the best talent that will create immediate impact and they don't have to stay within their region to find them."

Jomar Gomez, Transformative Coach working with founders of startups and small businesses, helping them dream bigger and achieve new heights. 

My Take

I'm always happy to validate our digital and business strategy with other notable industry peers around the world.

If there's anything I could add to the list, it's investing in an omni-channel digital strategy over the course of 2020.

Tapping into different channels -- anything from your blog or LinkedIn/Medium to social media networks to video and content aggregation services. The easiest way to enable you and your team is repurposing content.

Plan your content calendar for 2020 around long-form or video content that is easy to extract and break down into small and reusable chunks. It doesn't take forever to plan properly, but the impact is staggering: you can literally create content for an entire month by recording a 30-minute video or giving a conference talk.

And what is your number one focus for 2020? Let me know in the comments below!