Enhance your Saturday small enterprise technique with these 8 suggestions

In 2019, the 10th Annual Small Business reached Saturday with a an estimated $ 19.6 billion in reported expenses. What should that look like in 2020? Nobody really knows for sure, but with the era of social distancing, opportunities arise and there is no one more resilient than a small business owner.

While it is important to prepare early, the most important opportunity is to accelerate and improve your digital transformation efforts and to find ways to do more with less. That’s why we’ve put together eight tips from leading experts to help you beat your budget.

After reading the tips below, you will see some trends: social proof, Creative targeting and most importantly: Fantastic customer experience. These opportunities to win are not just there to help you increase conversions and increase sales, but also to help you build stronger relationships and learn more about your customers.

Without further ado, let’s boogie.

Understand that most of your customers have no idea what Small Business Saturday is.

“Use this as an opportunity to encourage them to CELEBRATE their relationship with YOUR BUSINESS. Use it as an opportunity to thank you for being a customer. “

“As business owners, we are in a constant revolving door to build trust with our customers and attract new customers’ attention. Small Business Saturday can be a great time to REMEMBER AGAIN customers why they chose you and that you are there to serve them. Turn it over and do ALL ABOUT YOU and they’ll do it all over you! “

– Ramon Ray – editor and producer, Intelligent hectic pace

Create a plethora of reviews that span your entire suite of products

“I think the most important strategy when it comes to Small Business Saturday or any holiday is to make sure you have reviews collected before that holiday kicks in.”

“Because now, especially in the times in which we live, e-commerce is everything. That way, people will buy products, and if you don’t have reviews, you risk having conversions impacted if certain products aren’t covered. “

“It is not a question of afterwards, because of course you will follow up after these purchases. It’s important to make sure these reviews are covered in the weeks and months leading up to Small Business Saturday, Black Friday, or any other big holiday season. “

– Yoni Solomon – Director of Product Marketing, G2

All you say is marketing. But when your customers say it, it’s social proof.

“Move your best rating for your top products up to the product description. It will be much more visible. One of the biggest tricks in marketing is getting the most compelling message in the most visible places. And the most compelling message is not from you. It is written by your customers. “

– Andy Crestodina – Co-Founder, CMO at Orbit Media Studios

PR can be a cost-effective tool for your small business to improve their marketing strategy before Small Business Saturday.

“The Christmas shopping season can be a difficult time to break through noisy updates from big box dealers, but a solid PR strategy suitable for a small business can help connect with prospects. Start by building relationships with local reporters – get in touch and introduce yourself and your company. A first introduction or a casual call over a (virtual!) Coffee can go a long way. If you’re doing something new and innovative for Small Business Saturday, share these updates with local reporters. Coverage on local news increases your company’s brand awareness and provides new customers with third-party credibility, making this a worthwhile effort ahead of a competitive small business Saturday. “

– Heather Kelly – CEO, SSPR

Either you destroy the customer experience or it kills you.

“Whether you invest or not, you have a customer experience and it affects your brand for better or for worse. It is no longer possible to be “just okay”, because “just okay” means forgetting. You are either good or bad in the eyes of your customers, there is no middle ground. If you do this well, you will be well positioned for the next year as people are very open to branding, especially when they find brands that offer a more personalized and tailored experience. “

“The good news is, even if you’re a small business, technology enables marketing to mimic that one-to-one experience that consumers not only expect, but demand. Whether you are talking to customers through social media support tickets, your web chat, or in person, it is possible to create a long, continuous personal experience that connects all of these different touchpoints. “

– Alex Gammalgard – Senior Director of Product, Active campaign

Social proof gets a boost from additional urgency and scarcity

“One-time, one-day events a year are a form of scarcity. And when you add social evidence with the urgency of this scarcity, it enlarges. “

“For example, you have another form of scarcity, which is inventory. So if you say this deal ends at midnight and then you add that there are only 400 units left, t-shirts, books, boots, whatever it is, and then you add that there are currently 800 people doing this View product, do you think they have to click? Damn it, they are. “

“That’s the value of showing how many people are buying and how many people are considering buying. Add testimonials and reviews on the same pricing page for the highest conversion you’ve ever had as it only compounded the scarcity. “

– Austin Distel – Marketing Director, Proof

Use last year’s content whenever you can.

“If you have a page for Black Friday or Small Business Saturday deals on your products, there’s no reason you have to create that page from scratch every year and then try to get Google to rate that page . It just won’t turn out that way. It’s better to have your own page with a topic that you can reuse year after year. “

“If you’re trying to do something with current affairs and create a URL that is linked to that one thing, that’s one point in history. It will not work. Think holistically, think long-term and think of things that will stand the test of time. “

– Aleks Shklyar – SEO engineer, iPullRank

Creative targeting brings offline and online together

“With people carrying phones in their pockets every day and streaming in and out of stores, you can access custom audiences based on cell phone ad IDs. This is where geo-targeting comes in. To use this data for Small Business Saturday, you can geofence your locations last year at the same time. Check out your 2019 locations in November and December, take these audiences and upload them to your social media platform of your choice or your demand-side platform of your choice. Your DSP. “

“You can now market your new e-commerce offerings to these people because they are the ones who are coming back to your business, whether physical or digital.”

“Advertisers now have to move from offline to online in order to meet their customers where they are. You can do this with your targeting as you can look back a year to see what your audiences were doing in 2019 at the same time. “

– Dan Dillon – VP of Marketing at RevealMobile

Bonus tip: This is how you get more customer ratings

Some of the tips above mentioned the importance of customer reviews to your business. The answer on how to get more reviews is very simple: just ask! Here, tracking is key. If your customer is happy with their experience, making it as easy and smooth as possible to leave feedback is crucial.

While I’m not an expert on this, my wife works at Twilio and mentioned a very interesting use case for using SMS to help. With Twilio you can communicate with your customers via SMS. In addition to sending them reminders or updating their order status, you can also send them a link to review. There are several ways to do this.

1. Use a platform like Podium to help
2. Take advantage of the Twilio integration with ActiveCampaign

With our Twilio integration you can send SMS and push notifications directly from your ActiveCampaign account. You can automatically send important notifications about order status, appointment reminders and more – wherever your customers are. And you can connect Twilio and ActiveCampaign in just a few simple steps – all without leaving your automation workflow.

One last thought

It’s going to be a small business Saturday like we’ve never seen before, and this year is prepared for opportunities. Reviews, customer loyalty, social proof, PR and above all the customer experience ensure that your hard-earned customers will come back. Oh, and don’t forget to add a bit of Christmas cheer to everything you do for the rest of the year, you could sweeten someone’s day!