Online Marketing for Small Business Saturday
November 29 will mark the fifth Small Business Saturday event, a day when shoppers are urged to put down the newspaper circulars and take a short drive downtown to do some of their holiday shopping at the local shops.
Small Business Saturday is an opportunity for small businesses to get out from under the shadows of big-box stores and take advantage of at least one day where they are the big story. If you're running a brick-and-mortar shop, get on board and let people know you're open for business along with all the other independent stores in your area. Get your signage in place (it doesn't have to be fancy), talk up your Small Business Saturday sale and events to customers, and discuss with customers and on social media.
Put the Words "Small Business Saturday" and Describe Your Business Location in Your Content
Small Business Saturday (SBS) has garnered excellent name recognition in the five years since American Express helped launch the concept. It's become a tradition in some communities, as Forbes notes, and if it's big in your community, capitalize on this. To borrow a line from NPR's Car Talk, it's time to jump-start your own Department of Shameless Commerce.
Put the words "Small Business Saturday" in your website content, preferably in the first 60 words or so on your landing page and maybe in the last sentence as well. Make sure it appears on pages you regularly update, such as those with product features and information on sales and upcoming events.
Don't overdo it, though: search engines remain sensitive to keyword cramming and stuffing.
Featured your SBS plans and hours on social media sites you use like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and Pinterest. Use the SBS hash tag (#SmallBusinessSaturday) in your posts/tweets/pins, and hash-tag your town or neighborhood as well. If your business is located in a shopping center that has its own social media presence, add that, too so that your business messages are linked.
It is very important to clearly identify your location. As people are (hopefully) out and about on SBS, many will rely on their smartphones for directions to your store. Be sure you identify the shopping center or neighborhood you're in, which makes it that much easier to spot from a busy road, particularly if your storefront isn't visible from the street.
Google recently updated its Pigeon algorithm that identifies local content. This has given a boost to businesses that depend on foot traffic and directory listings, as Search Engine Land has noted. Pigeon rewards businesses that emphasize their convenient location or otherwise talk about it, such as hospitality, education, restaurants, health clubs, and shops. Pigeon may have inadvertently pushed down search results for local franchises and other businesses that depend on national branding, giving small independent shops an extra, if temporary, boost.
Small Business Saturday is the Time to Offer the Best Deals
People shop at places like Walmart for one main reason: it's cheap. These stores aren't particularly attractive and few of their clerks really understand the products sold there, much less the customers who come in.
Your business, however, is a much better place to shop and customers need to know this. Get them in the door on SBS with special discounts for that day only. Put coupons on your website or ask people to mention a discount code. Create a coupon that can download to a smartphone; if you don't know how to do it, hire a local developer and feature him/her.
If you accept American Express, mention that $30 credit it's giving to cardholders on SBS. Tweet/post/pin, and repeat each day. This may be a good time to take advantage of free trials for social media management tools like Hootsuite that let you schedule your messages.
Customers shouldn't wait on lines and get trampled by crowds late Thanksgiving night or early Friday morning. Invite them to your store, where they will be greeted at a reasonable hour by a real business owner, not security guards. Your life revolves around the store and serving customers. Once they see this for themselves, perhaps they will consider your shop during the rest of the year instead of heading out for another ho-hum trip to Wally World.