Small Business Saturday is one of the best opportunities of the year for small businesses to attract new customers, reconnect with existing customers, and remind their communities why shopping small matters.
Held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Small Business Saturday falls right in the middle of the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Consumers are already looking for holiday gifts, special offers, experiences, and reasons to spend money. Your job is to make sure some of that money gets spent with you.
But here’s the thing: posting a “Shop Small” graphic on Instagram the night before isn’t a marketing strategy. If you want Small Business Saturday to generate real revenue, you need to start promoting early, create an offer worth talking about, and give customers multiple reasons to choose your business over all the other places competing for their holiday dollars.
Whether you operate a retail store, restaurant, salon, professional service business, online store, or local service company, here are some great marketing ideas to make Small Business Saturday work for your business.
Start Marketing Before Thanksgiving
Your Small Business Saturday campaign should not start on Small Business Saturday. Ideally, you should begin promoting your plans at least two to three weeks ahead of time. Start teasing what’s coming through your email list and social media channels. Tell customers you’re planning something special and encourage them to save the date. As you get closer, reveal your offer, featured products, giveaways, special guests, or events.
Create a simple promotional calendar covering the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday. Use email, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, text messaging, and your website depending on where your customers spend their time. The goal is repetition. People are busy during the holidays, and they may need to see your promotion several times before they remember to take action.
Create an Irresistible Small Business Saturday Offer
Give customers a reason to buy now. That doesn’t necessarily mean offering the biggest discount of the year. Small businesses often cannot compete with the deep discounts offered by national retailers, and you shouldn’t try. Instead, create value.
You could offer a gift with purchase, exclusive product bundle, buy-one-get-one promotion, limited-edition product, complimentary service upgrade, bonus gift card, or special package available only on Small Business Saturday. For example, a salon might offer a complimentary conditioning treatment with every service booked that day. A consultant could offer a strategy session bundled with a digital resource. A bakery could create a limited-edition holiday box. Make the offer special enough that customers don’t want to wait until next week.
Reward Your Best Customers First
Your existing customers should hear about your Small Business Saturday promotion before everyone else. Send your email subscribers and VIP customers an early-access offer. Give them the opportunity to shop before the general public, reserve limited inventory, book appointments, or receive an additional bonus.
You could send an email saying, “You’ve supported our small business all year, so we’re giving you first access to our Small Business Saturday specials.” That makes customers feel appreciated while creating urgency. Your current customers are also much easier to sell to than complete strangers. Before spending all your energy chasing new people, take care of the people who already know, like, and trust your business.
Partner With Other Small Businesses
Small Business Saturday is about community, so don’t market alone. Find three to five complementary businesses in your area and create a cross-promotion. A boutique could partner with a salon, coffee shop, florist, bookstore, photographer, or restaurant. Each business promotes the others to its audience.
You could create a Small Business Saturday shopping passport. Customers receive a stamp each time they visit a participating business. Anyone who collects a certain number of stamps is entered into a drawing for a prize package featuring products or gift cards from all the participating businesses. Now five businesses are marketing the promotion instead of one. That’s how small businesses compete with the big guys: collaboration.
Organize a Local Business Scavenger Hunt
Want to take collaboration to the next level? Turn Small Business Saturday into a town-wide adventure. Work with your local business association, Chamber of Commerce, Main Street organization, or downtown business district to organize a Small Business Saturday scavenger hunt. Instead of encouraging shoppers to visit just one business, create an experience that gets people walking through your community and discovering businesses they might not normally visit.
Each participating business can provide a clue, stamp, QR code, trivia question, or small challenge. Shoppers receive a scavenger hunt card or access a digital version and then travel from business to business collecting clues or completing activities. Require participants to visit a certain number of businesses to qualify for a grand-prize drawing. The prize could be a giant “Shop Local” package filled with gift cards, products, restaurant certificates, services, and experiences donated by participating businesses.
Make it social, too. Encourage participants to take pictures at designated locations and post them on social media using a community Small Business Saturday hashtag. You could offer bonus entries for making a purchase, bringing a friend, posting a selfie, or visiting a business they’ve never patronized before.
The real power of the scavenger hunt is cross-promotion. Every participating business promotes the event to its own customers. Instead of each business trying to generate traffic independently, the entire business community works together to create one big audience. Someone who regularly visits the neighborhood coffee shop could discover a new boutique. A customer visiting the bookstore might learn about the restaurant around the corner. Someone picking up flowers could discover a locally owned gift shop they didn’t even know existed.
Get your local media involved, too. Pitch the scavenger hunt to community newspapers, radio stations, neighborhood blogs, community Facebook groups, schools, libraries, and local influencers. Ask your town or municipality to promote the event through its website, newsletter, and social media accounts.
Create a Holiday Gift Guide
Don’t make customers figure out what to buy. Help them. Create a holiday gift guide featuring your products or services and organize your recommendations around the types of people customers are shopping for. You could feature “Gifts for Mom,” “Gifts Under $50,” “Gifts for Entrepreneurs,” “Last-Minute Gifts,” “Gifts for Teachers,” or “Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything.”
Service businesses can participate too. Create gift certificates, consultation packages, memberships, classes, experiences, or prepaid services that customers can give as gifts. Turn your gift guide into an email campaign, blog post, Instagram carousel, short-form video series, and printed handout. One piece of content can become five pieces of marketing.
Use Video to Show People What They’re Missing
Video is one of the easiest ways to build excitement around your Small Business Saturday promotion. Give customers a behind-the-scenes look at your preparations. Show new inventory arriving. Demonstrate products. Introduce your staff. Show how your products are made. Reveal your Small Business Saturday offer.
You can also go live during Small Business Saturday. Show what’s happening inside the store, feature popular products, interview customers, and remind followers about specials that are still available. People are attracted to activity. If your business looks like the place to be, more people will want to join you.
Make Your Business an Experience
Give people a reason to leave their couch. Online shopping is convenient, so physical businesses need to offer something customers cannot get by clicking “Add to Cart.” Offer refreshments. Bring in a DJ or local musician. Have product demonstrations. Offer free gift wrapping. Set up a holiday photo station. Invite a local author for a book signing. Bring in another entrepreneur for a pop-up shop.
Your goal is to turn Small Business Saturday into an event instead of just another sale. When people enjoy themselves, they stay longer, tell their friends, take pictures, share content, and often spend more money.
Create Social-Media-Only Specials
Give your followers a reason to pay attention to your social channels throughout the day. Create flash specials that last for one or two hours. Announce a secret discount code. Offer a bonus to the first 25 customers who mention an Instagram post.
You can also encourage customers to create content for you. Set up a branded photo area and ask customers to tag your business when they post. User-generated content provides social proof and expands your reach without requiring you to create every piece of content yourself.
Don’t Forget Your Google Business Profile
If you operate a local business, customers are going to search for you online before they visit. Make sure your Google Business Profile is accurate. Check your hours, address, phone number, website, photos, and business description. If you’re opening earlier or staying open later for Small Business Saturday, update your holiday hours.
Encourage happy customers to leave reviews too. Strong reviews don’t just help during Small Business Saturday. They can influence customers throughout the year.
Promote Gift Cards
Gift cards are one of the simplest ways to generate holiday revenue, particularly for service businesses. Create a Small Business Saturday gift card promotion such as, “Buy a $100 gift card and receive a $20 bonus card.”
You receive cash now while giving the customer an incentive to return later. Gift cards can also introduce your business to new customers because the recipient may have never purchased from you before. Make gift cards easy to purchase both online and in person.
Collect Customer Information
This may be the most important strategy on this entire list. Do not let Small Business Saturday become a one-day transaction. Your real opportunity is turning Saturday’s shoppers into customers you can market to again.
Encourage customers to join your email or text list. You might offer entry into a giveaway, a future discount, loyalty points, or access to special offers in exchange for signing up. Don’t just collect followers on social media. You don’t own your social-media audience. Build an email and text database that gives you a direct connection to your customers.
Give Customers a Reason to Come Back
Before customers leave your business, give them a reason to return in December or January. Include a bounce-back offer with every Small Business Saturday purchase. For example, “Spend $75 today and receive $15 off your next purchase between December 1 and December 20.”
You could also create a January promotion to bring customers back during the post-holiday slowdown. Now your Small Business Saturday campaign isn’t generating one sale. It’s potentially generating two. That’s smarter marketing.
Tell Your Small Business Story
Small Business Saturday is the perfect time to remind customers that there are real people behind your business. Tell them why you started the company. Introduce your employees. Talk about how long you’ve served the community. Highlight local organizations you support. Show where your products come from or how they’re made.
People can buy products almost anywhere. What they cannot buy anywhere else is your story, your expertise, your personality, and the experience of supporting your business. Don’t be afraid to remind people that when they shop small, they’re supporting entrepreneurs, employees, families, suppliers, and their local community.
In Part II, we’ll give you a Small Business Saturday marketing campaign timeline.
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