Now entering its fifth year, Small Business Saturday (November 29) encourages people to support local businesses during the busiest shopping season of the year. It’s estimated that in 2013 people spent $5.7 billion at small businesses on Small Business Saturday.
Here are some tried and true tips for Small Business Owners:
1. Form a community
Work with other local
businesses to make the event community-wide, rather than store-wide.
a.) Create a local “shop small” community to
meet and collaborate with other small business owners in the area.
b.) Cross-promote each business’s messages with the larger “shop small”
message.
Encourage small business to think of the day as a
neighborhood event.
2. Tell your story
Brick
and mortar shopping connects people to businesses in a personal way. To
connect your community to your business before they even step foot into
your store, start a Small Business Saturday campaign that tells stories
about your business.
3. Offer an experience
Several businesses we spoke with had plans to make Small Business Saturday
a special day in their stores. a.) Bring
in a local artist to show off your work, or serve appetizers and host giveaways in the store. Offer a discount to people that visit on Small
Business Saturday. Take advantage of coupons or sales promotions (See Puzzle game)
b.) Add signs encouraging customers
to take pictures at popular areas in your shop and connect with the store on Facebook and
Instagram. Great advertising!
4. Get the word out
a.) Reach out to
customers via email, newsletters and Facebook Page posts and ads, using
age, region and gender targeting. You can even send handwritten notes and
place phone calls inviting the best customers to come into the store.
b.) Give people directions to your business right on their phones.
5. Say thank you
There’s
nothing as valuable as a face-to-face conversation with a customer, so
thank yours for their support. You can take that one
step further and hand out gift bags with cookies or some other small gift to
thank their customers for visiting, but no matter how you choose to say
thank you, be sure you do.
