Nov 28 / LinXin

Small business Saturday: Support your local business!!

I found I have addicted in reading several marketing blogs that I spend soooooo much time clicking the links on the sidebar on those blogs. I love especially the advertisements they posted and commented on, and their unique ideas about business that I have never thought of. MUCH much more interesting than reading textbooks. Haha.

Here I wanna share a video, which talks about Small Business Saturday! Big retailers have Black Friday and online merchants have Cyber Monday, now America came out a new idea that urges people to support their local small businesses through Small business Saturday! From now on every Saturday after Thanksgiving will be Small Business Saturday. It indeed will help boosting the local businesses a lot because those are which people often forget when seasonal discounts and promotions come. People always anticipate discounts and rebates from big retailers or fancy brands such as Banana Republic, Apple, GAP, ZARA and so on that small businesses are ignored and left behind. So instead of having most of the money flows to big retailers, the America starts this campaign to adjust the gap that wealth becomes wealthier and poor becomes poorer. So to create awareness, American Express (the one who started this idea) uses a few promotional strategies to launch this shopping event, including advertising (posted below), PR (business talks on TV, email interview, retailers interview, “like” the “Small Business Saturday” page on Facebook and $1 will be donated Girls Inc., etc.), and personal selling which you will be served when you get into the stores. Sales promotion is provided not only to consumers but also small business owners – whoever sign up for the shopping event will get $100 advertising credit on Facebook! Sounds pretty cool as Facebook has always been the popular site for business to advertise. What about direct marketing? Uhmmmmm… perhaps it has conducted direct communication through electronic media like email to reach people? I’m not sure about this though. =) One thing that I definitely know is that, because small businesses often don’t have enough budget to advertise for their brands, the campaign that generates primary demands will certainly help the local economy as a whole.