by Rey Pasinli, Executive Director of Total-Apps
Small Business Saturday is an American shopping holiday created in 2010 by American Express. It encourages consumers to buy from small businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. While it was originally aimed to persuade consumers to buy local at retail locations, you can still take advantage of this holiday with your eCommerce store.
Here are a few tips:
1. Use Social Media to Reach a Wider Audience.
You’re going to want to take advantage of reaching the largest audience possible. Do you already take advantage of social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Take the time to promote your participation the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday. It would even be wise to encourage your fans and customers to tweet out how much they love shopping with your business and include the hashtag #SmallBusinessSaturday.
2. Team Up With Partner Businesses.
Just because you invested in an online presence and marketplace doesn’t mean you can’t create relationships and partnerships with other brands in your industry. Consider the industry you’re in and other brands that offer complimentary products. Brainstorm with them on how you can leverage your partnership to initiate promotions that will benefit everyone involved.
3. Build Lifelong Customers.
Now’s the time to show your customers that there’s a community behind your brand. The more a customer can connect and feel like they are a part of that community, the more loyal they will be. Creating a personal experience on holidays like Small Business Saturday is a great tool to help build lifelong customers that will be happy to promote your brand.
4. Promote Special Offers.
Make Small Business Saturday a truly unique and special holiday. Bring out the big guns! Promote special and exclusive offers that are only available on that day. Not only will this ensure that customers rush to type in your URL to take advantage of your special offers, it will ensure they have bragging rights in telling their friends and family about the killer deal they just got from your site! Let’s not forget they’ll be telling the whole world about it when they tweet about the deal with the hashtag #SmallBusinessSaturday.
5. Donate Part of Sales to Charity.
People love to give back. I recommend taking advantage of the increase in sales and consider giving back to a charity that matters to you. I’ve even seen where a portion of proceeds are donated to a charity of the customer’s choice. No matter how you work it, make sure the customer is part of the giving-back experience. Recent viral campaigns like the ALS Challenge are proof that giving back can go an extremely long way.
As Executive Director of Total Apps Inc., Rey Pasinli is responsible for identifying and developing emerging web-based technologies to improve the performance of each client’s processing. Rey currently collaborates with the top executives at multiple processors alongside 700+ prominent Internet business service vendors to provide clients with a one-stop shop for everything related to selling on the Internet.
