Just as you’ve finished eating your last leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwich, Small Business Saturday rolls around, helping small businesses everywhere capture a bigger piece of the holiday spending pie.  

More than 95 million people spent money at small businesses during last year’s event, an eight percent increase over 2014, according to a survey by American Express and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB). In case you’re not familiar, American Express launched Small Business Saturday to promote small businesses six years ago. Today, 55% of American consumers are aware of this high-profile shopping day.

You don’t have to be a traditional brick & mortar B2C retail shop to harness the Small Business Saturday buzz for your B2B.  Here are some strategies that can help you make the most of this once-a-year event:

Let customers know you’re participating.  

Badges, banners, profile pics and cover photos can help promote your involvement in your marketing emails, on your website, and on your social media profiles.  Pick up a free design tool, like Canva, to create your assets.  If you need something fast, American Express offers free marketing materials that you can customize for your business on its site.

Looking for more creative ideas? Check out Pinterest, which has hundreds of creative examples.

 

Get organized online.

With all of your digital assets created, you’ll want to point to a central location for all the info your customers need to spend with you. Design a Small Business Saturday landing page for your website. Include information like special promotions, photos of you and your team, a behind-the-scenes look at production, or highlight other small businesses you’re supporting.

Plan a special promo.

On Small Business Saturday, many retailers offer their clients a discount, a buy-one-get one free or for 50% off deal, a one-day special or a gift with purchase.  If you’re a B2B, you may be more service-oriented.  Consider offering a free hour of consulting, or 50% off the first month of service.  

B2Bs can also get in on the retail fun by partnering with local shops to offer your customer base something unique.  For instance, buy your next 5 customers a cup of joe from the local coffee shop.

Reconnect with dormant customers.

You’ll want to share your Small Business Saturday promotion with prospects, but customers are an important marketing channel as well. Check your CRM to pull a list of customers who haven’t engaged with you in a while. Win them back with an exclusive email offer. Sometimes, all it takes to get back into the swing of regular purchases is a good reason to buy.

Hold an in-store (or online) event.

Small Business Saturday is a great opportunity to get facetime with your customers. Host a book signing with an important author in your industry.  Hold a live demo of your software product. Throw a customer appreciation event or offer special discounts for 2017. Serve refreshments outside of your business to catch local shoppers.  Special events can get your business engaged with your community, strengthen relationships with the prospects and customers you know, and extend your reach to a whole new audience.

Build your (e)mailing list.

A busy shopping day like Small Business Saturday is a great time to add to your subscriber list. Include a signup sheet at your business location and consider offering a discount if they do. This is a perfect time of year to add to the roster of customers who receive any holiday promotions you are doing.

Support other small businesses.

Don’t limit your promotional efforts to your own place of business. Send a shout out to other businesses in your community that are celebrating alongside you on your social media pages. It’s a great way to build good will. And perhaps they will return the favor by spreading the good word about your business, too.

Leverage hashtags.

 Finally, Small Business Saturday is all about getting extra exposure for your small business. As you’re posting on social media, use hashtags like #shopsmall and #SmallBusinessSat to widen your audience and get more eyes on your brand.

Small Business Saturday can be a big opportunity for your small or micro-business so make sure you have a plan in place to make the most of this once-a-year event.

At Hatchbuck, one of our core values is “Make a Difference,” and Thanksgiving is the perfect time to do just that. This year, our team raised money, did some shopping and assembled 35 Thanksgiving day meals for families in need – complete with the stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.

It feels great to unite as a team and make an impact in our community – but giving back is more than just a feel-good endeavor.  

Giving back is smart, because consumers pay attention to the good deeds of businesses, whether that’s sponsoring a charity race, organizing a food drive or making an effort to try and improve the community in which the business operates. By making your company’s presence felt you are also promoting your brand in an organic way—as the byproduct of giving back, not as the main reason for it—you wind up doing some very effective marketing. In fact this kind of “cause-based” and “community-based” marketing can be done in a very small way and still resonate widely.

According to May 2013 study from Cone Communications and Echo Research, 82 percent of American consumers consider a company’s social responsibility when deciding whether to buy from them. And a recent Gallup meta-analysis found that companies that encourage employees to participate in activities that benefit the community have higher productivity and profitability than those with little or no employee engagement. Customers also noticed—those same small businesses had  12 percent higher customer loyalty.

Being a good corporate citizen (regularly, if possible, not just around Thanksgiving) should really be a part of your business’ DNA. The idea of “benefiting through giving” isn’t new—there are lots of examples of companies that have done well by doing good. It builds trust in your brand and helps you and your employees make valuable and lasting connections within that community.

Here are ten ways to give some love back to your community at Thanksgiving (and throughout the year):

1. Clean out your closets.

It doesn’t need to be Spring for you and your employees to clean out closets and donate the clothes, blankets, books and toys that aren’t of use anymore (but are in good condition) to those who can use them. Ask employees to bring those donations to a central point in the office. Find a local church or shelter where they are needed and donate them.

2. Adopt a family.

Work with a local charitable organization to identify a local family that is having a hard time financially this holiday season and create a list of what they need to have a good Thanksgiving—whether that’s a turkey, other ingredients, cooking utensils, a gift card to a supermarket, clothing, etc.

3. Donate your expertise and time.

Rather than having one of your most adept software engineers serving soup at a homeless shelter or buying groceries for a needy family, find opportunities for them to donate their expertise. Those software engineers could teach STEM courses at an inner city school once a week or as a two-day intensive program to ignite a love of science and technology.

Check with local shelters and community organizations in your area. Many offer mentor programs to help their patrons prepare for interviews or work on resumes for job opportunities.

4. Volunteer together at a food pantry or soup kitchen.

This is a popular way to give back, and it can have the double benefit of being a team-building activity. Call a local shelter or soup kitchen and let them know your company wants to volunteer on one day together. Or perhaps once a week from Thanksgiving through Christmas. (Or even once a month through the year….)

 

 

Allowing your team to take off one morning or afternoon a quarter to serve breakfast or walk adoptable shelter dogs together will not only help your community but will also bring your team closer.

5. Give a charity stipend to each employee.

Every business, small or large, should support charitable organizations in their local vicinity (or the local chapter of a national one). You can do that as a business or you can give each employee a certain amount of money, even just a couple of hundred dollars, to give to the nonprofits of their choice. It does a few good things at once—it puts the focus on your employees rather than the business, and it empowers employees to give back to charitable organizations whose missions they support.

6. Sponsor a holiday-related event.

Thanksgiving spurs a plenty of charitable events—from 5K Turkey Trots to food drives for those who might otherwise not have a Thanksgiving Dinner. Your business can be a sponsor of the event or you can offer to donate something within your business’ area of expertise, for example, printing signs, doing some marketing, or donating product (like after-race snack bars or fruit).

 7. Donate a portion of sales to a non-profit charitable organization.

Try to choose a charity that’s somehow connected to your own business.  If you have a restaurant, for instance, you could support a food pantry. If you run a coaching business, you might donate to an organization like Dress for Success, which gives women in need professional attire, support and development tools to help them succeed in the work world.

If you aren’t sure, post a poll on your company’s Facebook page and ask customers to help you select a charity. You could donate a portion of sales between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, or a portion of your sales at year-end. Once the choice is set, make sure to post it on your website and other social media so customers know that by patronizing your business they are also supporting a charity.

8. Visit a nursing home or physical rehabilitation facility

Organize your employees to bring flowers (or home baked cookies or other special surprises) to a senior center or skilled nursing facility and spend a couple of hours chatting with residents, playing cards, chess, checkers or doing crafts.

9. Bake some cookies.

Encourage employees to bake up batches of whatever they like—cookies, brownies, cupcakes—and pick one or two places to bring them as a way to say “thanks for your  service,” like the local police station, firehouse or animal shelter.

10. Create Thanksgiving baskets.

Get your team together and put together Thanksgiving baskets for the needy. Ask employees to donate what they would like to these baskets—things like potatoes, a box of stuffing, gravy, canned soup, cornbread mix, or cans of yams, corn, green beans, fried onions, or a pie. The company could donate gift cards to grocery stores and provides the baskets. Get together one afternoon to assemble the baskets and then hand deliver them or work with a charitable group to donate baskets to those in need during the holiday.

 

 

Volunteering for Thanksgiving (and year round) will have a plethora of benefits for your small business including team building, positive PR and a mental break from the hustle and bustle of business day-to-day.

”I genuinely believe that any business can create a competitive advantage through giving outstanding customer care.” 

– Gary Vaynerchuk

Customers are the heartbeat of your business.

The truth is, no metric is more important to the success of your business than customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV directly determines the very core of the ultimate purpose of a business–which is maximizing value for your ideal customers.

High CLV is a direct result of customer loyalty. Pretty much every successful business can be defined by a loyal customer base. A big part of creating a loyal customer base is to deliver a customer experience that is so good, they’ll fall in love with your brand and your product or service.

Tony Hsieh of Zappos calls it delivering a “WOW experience.” In short, this means going the extra mile, surprising your customers, and making them feel special. Here are some examples.

1. Focus on the First Experience

Think about new customers as a date and existing ones as a marriage. That’s, in fact, a great perspective to think about when it comes to delivering a great customer experience.

The first experience is important. Don’t believe me? Just think about the last time you walked into a hotel. The front desk staff is always your first impression and a big signal as to the quality of your stay. In your business, new customers made a fresh decision to give you an opportunity and spend money with you. Still, there’s some anticipation of whether the decision was right or not – and we all love to be right.

So, give them that feeling. This first experience sets the table for whatever follows. If you can provide outstanding support and impress your customers right from the start, you’re on the way to building a great business.

2. Get Your Response Time Down

There are a bunch of studies showing that customers who get great support are more likely to recommend new customers. One of the key determinants of what customers evaluate as great support is the response time.

A very simple solution to start with is to implement an automated email that acknowledges that you received their message. This is a must. Over the long term, you want to focus on cutting down the response time so that it is as short as possible.

Just look at the best companies. If Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, can respond within 24 hours, you should be able to do that too.

3. Surprise Them

The famous example is Wufoo. In their early days, the company sent out handwritten thank you cards to their first customers. Not only were they impressed, but it generated a lot of PR and buzz on social media. In fact, it’s been years since they did it and look; we’re still writing about it.

Christie Cookies and Cookie Crowd offer free custom tins and delivery.

Jawbone did the same thing. Help Scout sent a tin of free cookies. In fact, it can be something as simple as a $5 Starbucks voucher, a gift card, or a discount. Just show your customers that you appreciate them.

4. Impress One Customer

The best example here is Zappos. In 2011, the company sent flowers to a woman whose feet were damaged by harsh medical treatments. In 2010, a customer service rep physically went to a rival shoe store to get a specific pair for a customer when Zappos ran out of stock.

That’s the reason Zappos is beloved by its customers and why it grew from an online shop to a billion dollar company so quickly.

By the way, if you really care about customer support, you should absolutely read “Delivering Happiness,” a book by Zappos’ founder Tony Hsieh.

5. Meet Them in Person

If you really want to build an outstanding company, you should be seeing your customers regularly. That way, you will stay in touch with their needs and understand their motivations.

Airbnb Open, an event Airbnb organized for its users

You’ll also show them you care. An effective way to do this is to organize meetups via meetup.com or some other venue. For a more one-to-one interaction, you can also offer to take them for a coffee or a meal.

If your customers are spread across the country (or world), shoot them a note and a giftcard to grab virtual coffee via Skype or Google Hangout. Even if it doesn’t happen, the effort and sentiment behind your outreach won’t go unnoticed.

6. Refer a Customer

If you’re a B2B businesses, make a reasonable effort to send business to your customers. Not only will you help them grow (and continue to do business with you), but it’s a form of saying thanks too.

There are many ways to make your customers feel appreciated. It all starts with the right mindset. Above are just some ideas, but all it takes is some creativity and making a great customer experience part of your company’s culture.

Ah, the holidays….

The  happiest time of year filled with fun, family, friends, food…and stress.

And let’s face it: the stress is only magnified for small business owners like you.

For a B2C retail operation, chances are the holidays are the busiest sales season. It can be a busy and overwhelming time, but at least B2C retailers are making sales. But what if your business lives in the B2B space? Or your B2C business sells products that tend to be “out of sight and out of mind” during the holiday season (like patio furniture or swimming pool accessories)? Sales are probably slow and customer engagement may be even slower.

So what’s the biggest reason small business owners face so much stress this time of year? Chances are, if you fall into the last two categories, it’s caused by a lack of customer engagement. Your potential buyers have checked out and gone on autopilot and decided not to decide – they keep telling you to “call after the holidays,” or ignore you altogether.

Well, here’s some great news! Just because your business and customer engagement levels may slow to a crawl this time of year doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Let’s talk about how you can improve both and get a solid start for the new year.

Get In Their Heads.

Above all, it helps to understand your audience’s mindset. They are just as distracted and busy as you are. It’s tough to break through the noise and get their attention any time of year. It’s even harder during the holidays. So what can you do?

For one thing, have empathy and truly understand what they are feeling and where they’re coming from. You may want to start out by sending a survey asking what their biggest challenges are during the holiday and what you can do to make things easier. This not only demonstrates that you care about your customers, but it will also help you market to them more effectively during the holiday season.  

If you need help empathizing with your customer base, we have a handy Persona Workbook that makes it easy to explore your ideal buyer and pinpoint their top issues, and help you think about how you can address them.

Keep Current Customers at the Top of Your List.

As the end of the year approaches, many businesses pause to evaluate the tools and services they are currently using and decide which ones to move forward with and which ones to eliminate in the upcoming year.  Don’t find yourself on their naughty list.

Be proactive in reaching out to customers that you might be at risk of losing – for instance, customers with a contract renewal coming up, or customers that have not engaged with you in a while.

At the same time, don’t neglect the customers that have been loyal to you all year long.  Offer a special incentive or a creative reward to remind your customers why they love doing business with you.
Extra focus on your customers during the holidays can increase sales and prevent losses as you head into the new year.

Go Above and Beyond During the Season of Giving.

It’s the season of giving, so give. It’s important to remember those who have bought from you in the past. Give your current customers sincere thanks. A thank you note this time of year (actually, get in the habit of sending thank you notes year round), especially one that is hand-written and sent via snail mail, will go a long way. It will remind your customers about you and may help spur new business. Use your thank you message to get them to re-engage in some way, maybe a time-limited sale.

For folks who are in your sales pipeline but haven’t yet bought, consider sending them a holiday greeting thanking them for their interest in your product. Don’t be overtly “salesy” with it, but do subtly push them to get off the couch and contact you now.

What else can you give? Give your previous and prospective buyers who are on the fence and telling you to “contact me after the first of the year” a compelling reason to buy now. It may be a financial discount or some other incentive, but offer them a reason to do business with you now instead of waiting until next year.

And as always, give your email subscribers valuable content. But this time of year, give it a seasonal focus. Concentrate on articles with a holiday or end-of-year or “Predictions For 2017” theme.

Want to really impress your audience? Provide them with a free report that will help them do their work more efficiently and be more productive despite the personal and professional distractions of the holiday season. (See: Hatchbuck’s B2B Holiday Marketing Guide for a great example!)

There’s No Time Like The Present, But Don’t Forget to Look Ahead.

Maybe your prospects have checked out until January. That doesn’t mean you have to as well. Set a goal of finishing the year strong. Not only will this help you enjoy a more profitable December, it will help you build momentum and set the stage for a great start in January.

Success in business requires you to understand what your customers want and find a way to give it to them through your product or service. What does EVERY business owner want? A successful, roaring start to the new business year. Brainstorm and determine how you can help them achieve that.

In your communications with your audience, set the stage in their minds, not only about engaging with you during the holiday season, but also after the first of the year. Provide content and incentives now that will lead them to want to talk to you not just about their current needs, but about a New Year’s business boost. Start planting the seeds of ongoing value so they’ll be sure to reach out after the holidays.

The content you send out, especially if you serve a well-defined niche, might be centered on “Ways Companies Like Yours Can Gain An Advantage Over Your Competitors In The First Quarter Of 2017.”

With all of the distractions you face during the holidays, it’s a big challenge to stay organized and efficient. But it’s more crucial than ever. And you can’t do it without the right tools and the right mindset.