5 Quick Tips for Small Business Saturday Success
We’ve compiled a short list of achievable changes you can make to your website and social media profiles this week in time for Small Business Saturday.
Between the brief flurry of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, there is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses called Small Business Saturday (SBS). Launched by American Express in 2010, SBS takes place every year on the Saturday after Black Friday in America. We tend to celebrate SBS a little later in the UK; this year, it will fall on Saturday, 3rd December 2022. This is so small businesses can take full advantage of this crucial shopping opportunity without the hustle and bustle of Amazon Prime and Black Friday sales.
Small Business Saturday encourages consumers from the UK to support all types of small businesses, whether online, in offices or in-store during Christmas. And this year, it couldn’t be more pertinent to help smaller companies within our local community. On the day, it’s easy for consumers to pop into town and browse their local shops. Shopping online is even more accessible, as consumers no longer have to leave their homes to shop small. However, for small business owners, we understand how hard it can be to market your products and services online and actually get seen by the wider community. That’s why we’ve listed 5 quick marketing tips for Small Business Saturday to help you get seen amongst all the noise of the festive sales. Best of all, they’re easy to implement and completely free.
1) Give Your Website A Little Refresh
One of the best ways to let your customers know you are participating in Small Business Saturday is to refresh your website, and here are some of our top suggestions:
- Update your website’s theme to celebrate the occasion. This can include multiple design elements or a single banner to promote sales at the top of your homepage.
- Create an Email Popup for exclusive SBS deal access. An Email Popup is a small window on your website’s homepage, asking those who enter your website to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for deals.
- Write a short blog post detailing how your business is choosing to celebrate SBS and why this event is so important.
Before SBS, you should also conduct a quick website audit to ensure all links and pages are working correctly and that there are no error codes. It’s also a good idea to check that your NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) citations are consistent across the site. Consumer trust is often conditional on how professional and user-friendly your online presence is. A consumer keen to visit your store or purchase an item/service online can quickly lose faith once reaching a website with conflicting information or error codes.
2) Create Shareable Content
In the lead-up to SBS, we suggest posting shareable content detailing any promotions or competitions you’ve planned to entice more followers. If you’re super busy this week, this can be as simple as posting a relevant image with the promotion information in the caption. Alternatively, if you have more time, you may want to invest some of it into video content. Since the rise of TikTok, short-form, video-based content has consistently trended. You can quickly record video content with Instagram/TikTok reels or Facebook Lives, and here are some suggestions of content to include:
- Recordings of store items you’re planning to discount
- Your SBS window displays
- A video detailing the importance of shopping small and local
3) Update Your Google Business Listing
On Small Business Saturday, many people will set out to visit their local stores. Therefore, updating your local listing information on Yelp, Facebook, and, most importantly, Google Business is essential. As of late, there has been an ever-increasing rise of ‘near me’ searches, so ensure your Google Business opening hours, contact information and amenities are up-to-date. You can also post about SBS on your Google Business profile, so people know you’re participating in the event.
4) Utilise Social Media Tools
Social Media platforms are constantly adding more tools to help market small businesses. And most of the time, these tools are efficient, user-friendly and free to use. If you’re a B2B company, it’s best to focus your efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter. For B2C companies, Facebook and Instagram are your best bets in reaching your targeted audience. In fact, Instagram is one of the best platforms out there at the moment to use for B2C businesses. For example, with the ‘Support Small Business‘ sticker, Instagram users can directly mention small businesses they love in their stories to give their followers a preview of the business account. Once your business has been mentioned, it will be automatically added into a shared small businesses’ Instagram story so you can reach new customers.
Additionally, sharing and reacting to user-generated content is a great way to build customer rapport by staying active on your tagged posts and stories. When posting promotional content for SBS, use hashtags like #SmallBusinessSaturday and #ShopSmall.
5) Speedy Social Commerce
Facebook and Instagram Social Commerce Stores are online shops which allow people to browse and purchase your products directly through the platforms. It can drive sales by extending your reach to more shoppers and make buying easier for consumers as they don’t have to scroll through your website to make a purchase. Furthermore, these stores also help filter traffic from your website, which can slow down website speeds when many users enter at one time. List your best-selling products, alongside any promotional sale items for SBS, on your social commerce stores to create new buying avenues.
Most of all, we hope you have a successful Small Business Saturday from HookedOnMedia!
