My business predictions for 2025

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 What lies ahead for small businesses in the year 2025? Well, obviously I don’t have a crystal ball, but here are my predictions for what I think we’re going to see in this space of marketing, technology, consumer confidence, and the wider political landscape in the year that lies ahead, and what you can do to adapt and evolve your business to have your best year yet in this coming year.

 My first prediction is that AI Or artificial intelligence content will increasingly become mainstream. We already saw a lot of this in 2024. And I think that as we step into this new year. And we will see more and more video content, photo content, written content that is written by machines or created by machines.

And as a result of this, I really believe that skepticism will be high. And trust will be down. So this is where the opportunity to stand out from a crowd of bots and really be authentic in the way that you are marketing your business, really be transparent. Really being true to who you are, what your business is, what your brand stands for will be essential to stand out.

I believe there’s going to be even more and more noise in the online world. And your way to stand out from the crowd is To be you is to be your brand’s true essence. I should just point out, I don’t know if you can hear it on this mic. There is actually a thunderstorm that has just hit in the background here.

So if you hear some rumbling in the background, that’s what’s going on, but I’m going to keep going while I’m on a roll. As a result of the increase in AI. I think there’s going to be a real drive for people to want to have more and more In person interactions. So people are going to want to have those in person experiences.

Whether you’re a mentor or whether you offer styling services, people are going to want to have that real connection so that they know that there’s a real person there that they are interacting with. I also believe that short term video is going to increasingly be key as we come into this new year with our customers attention span becoming shorter and shorter.

I know that there was a trend, the one second video reel in 2024, as much as, as silly as that was, I think we are going to see more and more of that. Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and I think that if you are going to want to get cut through and traction, you are going to need to grab people’s attention.

You need to stand out. People aren’t going to be sitting around patiently waiting for the message to come across. They want to hear the information quickly. Now with the pending TikTok ban, I also think this will create space for a potential new players. Or players to enter the market in the form of short term video.

In the, in the short term, I think that we will see a boom in Instagram, particularly in that short form, real style content, as all of the people who are on TikTok are finding new ways to get that little hit. As a result of that, I think we might see a bit of a change in the way that our Instagram content is appearing, because if you’re familiar with both platforms, TikTok and Instagram reels are kind of a little bit different.

TikTok is more about entertainment, really, really quick, short form. Whereas Instagram, I find tends to be a little bit more longer for less about entertainment. I’m perhaps more around education, but I think that we might find more of that entertainment style content coming across into Instagram with the ban.

I also think it would be interesting to see a shift happening in the online space. As here in Australia, we have a ban happening on social media for those under the age of 16 years. I’m really interested to see how they’re going to actually. moderate that, how they’re actually going to enforce that. And I think that we’re going to see a bit of backlash around both the ban on TikTok and the social media ban for teens.

It’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out, whether people are creating ways to get around it. Whether there is a big pushback at a political level, but I definitely think there’s going to be something. This isn’t just all going to be this smooth. Yeah, cool. We don’t have TikTok anymore. So there’s potential implications off the back of that as well.

In another space in the marketing area, I believe that websites are going to become less and less relevant. We’re already seeing that starting to happen, but I think with the evolution of short term video AI, I think that people aren’t going to be going to traditional websites as much as they used to, to capture information.

They’ll be relying on people’s social media presence, and I believe that people are going to continue to make decisions around purchasing faster and faster. As time goes on, the rise of consumerism, people will take less time. I think as a result, we might see a shift towards lower price points of things as well.

Another thing that we, that I am predicting we’ll see is that there is less and less reliance on Google and search engine platforms on a whole. As people will start to use AI, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, et cetera, for searching. I know that I’m already I’m doing that myself. It’s sort of my first protocol when I’m doing research now, rather than going to Google.

If you are doing that yourself, a bit of a word of warning, make sure that you do check your sources. I have numerous times been fed inaccurate information through AI. So make sure that you do cross check your sources if that is your main protocol. However, I think that this is relevant because if you were thinking about ways to be marketing your business, yes, SEO will play a role, but I think that it will become less and less prevalent with the evolution of AI.

In the space of technology, I think that we will see increasingly more amounts of automation. In 2024, we saw the rise of many chats. Where everyone was typing type profit below to get my free guide, we will see more and more of that. Where things are happening on autopilot. Now, this is great as a business owner, as it will free up time, but as a consumer, this also has implications because I already know that when I’m talking to someone online, I’m starting to be skeptical.

Am I really? Chatting to a person here, or am I chatting to a bot? So again, this evolution into the space of automation will also continue to raise people’s level of trust and skepticism in the space of technology. I also think that cyber safety is going to become a really big area of focus in the years to come with our.

Scammers getting more and more intelligent. There is more fraud, increasing threat. And again, the, the rise of AI will make it harder and harder to distinguish what is real and what is not. I know back in the day, you used to go. Don’t open an email that comes from dodgy brothers at hotmail. com. But now people are able to actually create I can’t remember the exact term, but it looks like it’s coming from an actual URL of a trusted company.

People are able to create videos, copy other people’s voices. And again, this will increasingly be used. By scammers and fraudsters to capture our information. So I think it’s important to be aware of this and to be vigilant with protecting your data and vigilant with protecting your business.

My next prediction. After a, what feels like a very extended time of high interest rates, I really think this is going to be the year that we see interest rate rates drop. And with that will come increased consumer confidence. In the lower middle to lower parts of the market. So if you deal with people who do have a mortgage, if your clients are people who have been affected by the high interest rates, I am predicting that this year that will start to turn around.

We’ll start to have increased consumer confidence, people starting to spend money again. On another note, political landscape. So. I believe that with the appointment of Donald Trump, there’s going to be a shift away from eco friendliness, the inclusion movement that’s been happening lately. And I think there’ll be a real shift towards capitalism and less of a focus on caring about the planet and things like that. Really curious to see how this unfolds, but that is a prediction that I have for this coming year. Another big Focus area, something to be of concern for business owners and us as humans, really, is the general global political instability that exists.

I think that this is the most unstable political landscape on a global level has been ever. In my lifetime, and I think that this is something that will continue to be a concern over the coming year. So, look, I know that I’ve shared lots of predictions and some of it seems a bit doom and gloom, some of it optimistic, but what does this all mean for you as a business owner?

At the end of the day, the number one thing that you can control, we cannot control what’s going on. I know sometimes people say to me, I hate AI and I don’t love this and I get it. But the truth is, is that change is inevitable and we cannot change a lot of the things that are going on around us. But there is one thing that we do have control over, and that is our mindset, how you are looking at the things that are going on around you and what the hell you are going to do about it.

So bearing in mind that change is inevitable, you need to have a think, how are you yourself as an individual and your business going to adapt to these inevitable changes that are coming. Are you going to say, I’m not coming on that journey or will you say, okay, this is the way things are going. I’m going to need to learn to evolve and adapt and do things differently to be competitive in this new world that we are entering into.

This is an opportunity for you to grow an opportunity for you to create growth. In your business. Remember that no matter what is going on, there are always industries, businesses, and individuals that are thriving. So how can you choose to be one of those in these ever changing times? I’m really curious to hear what your predictions are for 2025.

So please come on over to Instagram. Send me a DM. I’m a Clare. Underscore would underscore coach. That’s C L a R E underscore wood underscore coach. Let me know what you thought of this episode. Let me know if you’ve got any of your predictions and if you’ve got an audience that you think these predictions might be helpful for, please share this episode on your social media as well.

So that other business owners can hear and see what they think. See if these predictions ring true for them. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast. And I cannot wait to be landing in your ears again, very soon. 

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio