Small Business Saturday was founded in 2010 by American Express to champion local businesses and encourage people to shop small during the holiday season. Celebrated on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, the day is a big one for small businesses. Last year, it drove an estimated $18 billion in consumer spending.
Even if your business has not formally participated in the past, it’s possible you’ve felt the positive ripples from Small Business Saturday. Consumers like to shop small, with 86% saying they’re likely to do so either online or in-person over the holidays. Businesses that create a Small Business Saturday marketing plan can tap directly into that societal eagerness to buy from somewhere other than a big-box store.
If you’re looking to make the most of Small Business Saturday this year, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll walk through Small Business Saturday ideas and share tips and examples to inspire your own efforts.
Contents
- Small Business Saturday marketing basics to get right
- Small Business Saturday marketing ideas (+examples)
- Small Business Saturday FAQs
Small Business Saturday marketing basics to get right
Before diving head-first into your Small Business Saturday marketing plans, it’s smart to answer some foundational questions. How will your efforts around this day contribute to broader business goals? What kind of offer do you want to create? And how can you spread the word about your participation?
What’s my Small Business Saturday marketing goal?
What do you want to achieve this Small Business Saturday? Deciding this is the first step in developing a marketing plan for the day. You may want to:
- Increase your online sales
- Drive revenue at in-person locations
- Boost awareness of your business in the community
- Generate more leads
- Encourage lapsed customers to return
The SMART goal framework can help you define your objectives.
Whatever your objective is, stating it clearly anchors your Small Business Saturday marketing plan. From there, you can set a budget for your campaign and design an offer to get people in the door.
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What is a good Small Business Saturday marketing budget?
That answer will depend on your goals for the day and where your business is in its lifecycle. The average local business spends between five and 10% of its annual revenue on marketing. You can use this marketing budget calculator to help you define a reasonable monthly spend, and from there, decide what portion to allocate to your Small Business Saturday marketing.
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Marketing Budget Calculator
Enter your revenue, pick an allocation percentage and see your annual and monthly marketing budget with a suggested channel split.
Rule of thumb: most local businesses start at 5-10% of revenue; growth-focused businesses run 14% or more. Fine-tune with the slider.
$40,000
per year ($3,333/month)
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What Small Business Saturday offer should you try?
Small Business Saturday sits between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These massive shopping days kick off the holiday season, and people are ready to spend big to get gifts for family and friends. They’re also on the hunt for deals.
While many small businesses can’t slash prices in the way a big-box retailer can, designing a thoughtful offer can help you stand out and win favor with people looking for holiday discounts.
You can certainly create a simple sale offer for the day, but if that doesn’t make sense for your business, consider these alternatives:
- Create a product bundle that offers a discount when people buy a particular set of items. You can even sell them gift-wrapped!
- Offer a discount when people buy more. This might look like a buy-one-get-one offer, or an increasing percentage off at higher spending tiers.
- Send discount codes only to returning customers. This acts as a loyalty offer and helps drive repeat business.
- Give VIPs early access, but no additional discounts. Allow your top customers to shop holiday favorites before everyone else.
- Have small in-store perks. Serve hot chocolate, give out holiday-themed stickers, or distribute branded ornaments or calendars. A low-cost gift can have a high impact.
- Host an in-person raffle or an online contest. This creates excitement without you needing to give something to everyone who interacts with your business.
- Partner up with other local businesses and create a joint offer for people who patronize all your stores.
Cross-promote with other local businesses for more reach.
How will people know you’re participating in Small Business Saturday?
As you plan your participation, plug into the Small Business Saturday ecosystem and let consumers know you’re part of the movement. An easy first step is to add your business to the Shop Small map. It serves as a directory for Amex cardholders, helping them find local businesses to support.
Next, check out the list of Neighborhood Champions to see if an organization near you has taken on that role. Amex selects Neighborhood Champions to host local events and spread the word about Small Business Saturday in their communities. Connecting with a Champion helps you plug into the local network and amplify your business’s participation.
You can also update your own digital and physical properties to let people know you’re part of the Small Business Saturday celebrations. Add a note to your Google Business Profile, update your banner image on social media sites, add a popup to your website, and post signs in your physical locations.
Small Business Saturday marketing ideas (+ examples)
Once you’ve nailed the basics, you can start thinking about ideas for your campaign. We’ve listed several here that are great for getting the word out about your offer and plans for the day.
Promote on social media
Social media marketing is a great way to spread the news about your Small Business Saturday plans. You can reach existing followers with organic content that shares what you’re doing that day and invites people to stop by or shop online.
Include holiday hashtags to expand your content’s reach beyond your immediate circle. People searching on social media for places to shop small might happen upon your content if you use the right hashtags.
Using hashtags like #SmallBusinessSaturday and #ShopSmall can help amplify your content.
Finally, you can put some advertising dollars behind your Small Business Saturday content. Boosting organic content or building out a Small Business Saturday-specific social media advertising campaign helps you reach an even broader audience.
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Send an email campaign
Email remains an incredibly effective marketing channel with a great return on investment. Building out an email campaign around your Small Business Saturday offer puts you top-of-mind with subscribers and encourages them to add your store to their list of shopping destinations.
Start sending out Small Business Saturday emails well ahead of the event. You might even tease your offer with a bit of mystery to get your audience curious and excited. As the day draws nearer, step up your email cadence and share more details about what people will see when they visit you on Small Business Saturday.
Keep sending emails through the end of the day to catch last-minute shoppers who decide to start their holiday shopping list on the spot.
Host an in-person event
That first weekend of holiday shopping can sometimes feel like a slog for shoppers. There’s a long list of stores to visit and gifts to purchase, and it can all add up to a long day.
Consider throwing an in-person event at your store that feels celebratory and breaks up some of the monotony of deal-hunting. It doesn’t have to be anything big or costly. Simply having some spiced chai and apple cider donuts on hand for people stopping into your store can go a long way toward making the shopping experience far more festive.
You might also host a more formal event that ties in with your work. A craft store could hold a kids’ ornament decorating party, or a florist could teach a class on arranging holiday table centerpieces. Holding a fun event that encourages participants to shop with you afterward is a great way to make your store a destination for Small Business Saturday.
Change up your website
Making adjustments to your website ahead of Small Business Saturday is a smart move, regardless of whether you sell online.
First, add a banner or pop-up announcing your Small Business Saturday plans. Tell people about your sale, in-store event, or other offer you’ve created.
Then, consider adjusting your homepage copy to include a call-out about the upcoming holiday with a call to action (CTA) that drives to a Small Business Saturday landing page. There you can get into the details about your plan, link to product pages for items included in your offer, and share anything else that’s relevant for shoppers to know.
Host a contest or giveaway
The average American spends over $1,000 on holiday gifts. As people prepare to swipe their credit cards to give to others, a giveaway or contest with a prize feels especially enticing. Why not enter a contest to treat yourself, the thinking goes.
Instagram giveaways are easy to run and get lots of reach.
How you structure your Small Business Saturday offering will depend on your objectives. If you want to drive brand awareness, you might host your contest online and encourage participants to tag friends as part of the contest entry process. If you want to encourage foot traffic, host your giveaway in your store.
Either way, put together a thoughtful gift offering that’s exciting enough to encourage your audience to participate in the giveaway or contest.
Run ads online and in local media
Small Business Saturday celebrates shopping local. That’s why advertising to your neighbors can have an outsized impact ahead of this holiday. Fortunately, both digital and analog advertising tactics allow you to reach consumers in your backyard.
With PPC ads, you can target by geography, showing up in searches for a specific area. The same goes for locally targeted display ads. In both cases, you can target them contextually so viewers see them alongside relevant content.
Small Business Saturday FAQs
There’s a lot to prepare for. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Small Business Saturday.
What is Small Business Saturday?
Small Business Saturday is an annual shopping day that encourages people to buy from local, independent businesses. American Express started it in 2010, and it falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Is Small Business Saturday a success?
Yes. Shoppers reported spending an estimated $22 billion at small businesses on Small Business Saturday 2024. Small business owners estimate that as much as 20% of their annual revenue will come from the event.
Does Amex still do Small Business Saturday?
Yes. American Express still runs Small Business Saturday, and the U.S. Small Business Administration has co-sponsored it since 2010.
Is Small Business Saturday always after Black Friday?
Yes. Small Business Saturday is always the day after Black Friday, which makes it the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Make a big splash this Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday represents a huge opportunity for local businesses to start the holiday season strong. By defining your business goals for the day and building a marketing plan to support them, you can reach prospective customers and drive meaningful business that day.
And if you’re wondering how to build out a comprehensive marketing strategy that drives leads and converts customers all year, reach out. We’ll show you how our solutions help you find new customers wherever buyers spend time.
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