Taking care of employees is crucial for attracting and retaining top-tier talent. A progressive company culture, competitive salaries, and traditional benefits will always be a strong foundation for a...
If you’re a retail business leader, the next month will likely be your busiest time of year. After the throes of Black Friday and before Cyber Monday’s online frenzy, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize and support their local small retailers. In 2021, 51 million shoppers participated, each spending an average of $305 and boosting revenue and job creation in this sector.
Small businesses play a vital role in the economy and are at the heart of our communities. This year, Small Business Saturday falls on November 26. Here are some tips for making yours a success!
1. Step Up Your Social Media Presence
We've all heard the motto, "work smarter, not harder." This applies to building your organization’s social network as well. With social media, you can build a vast network with only a few clicks – expanding your reach efficiently.
Social media allows you to take your customer service to the next level by responding to customer questions and complaints quickly and directly. For example, if a customer has a problem with your product and voices their concern on your Facebook page, you now have the opportunity to reach out to them, research their concern, and find a solution that solves their problem—giving you the power to turn a dissatisfied customer into a happy one.
Whether the appropriate course of action is replacing the product, offering a refund, or authorizing a store credit, you turned a negative interaction into a positive user experience on a public channel, where other customers and prospects have the opportunity to see how well you treat your customers.
2. Offer Chatbot Support
In the past, customers sent a message to a support e-mail and were stuck in limbo waiting at least 24 hours before they received a response. At that point, emails would go back and forth for days before anything was finally resolved. What a headache! However, the introduction of chatbot support has helped resolve the issue of back-and-forth e-mails and opened up a space for real-time conversations.
If you choose to implement chat support for your business, you don’t have to completely phase out human interaction. In fact, most companies should try to have humans interacting through chat support during business hours, and only rely on chatbots after business hours to answer the most commonly asked questions.
3. Optimize Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing
GMB is a feature that allows you to manage how your company’s location(s) appear on Google Search and Google Maps. This includes your location(s), business name, hours of operation, photos of your locations, contact information, management of your customer reviews, and much more.
If someone searches for “coffee shops near me,” chances are, they’re on the hunt for a cup of Joe! So, if a consumer is searching for a local business to patronize for holiday shopping, make sure your accurate, up-to-date GMB listing will lead them to your store.
4. Solicit Online Reviews
Online reviews are a critical part of branding. These days, most consumers read Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yelp, and other platform reviews before making purchases or choosing service providers. In fact, 81% of consumers use Google to evaluate businesses.
Consumers use reviews to help them determine whether or not they can trust a brand, product, and/or service provider, so your goal should be to solicit as many positive reviews as possible from your satisfied customers.
Here are three simple ways you can solicit reviews:
- Leverage your customer database by emailing consumers who have purchased one of your products.
- Add a banner or button to your website’s homepage inviting customers to leave a 5-Star review.
- Add a clickable link to your customers’ electronic receipts inviting them to leave a Google review.
Partner with a PEO to Free Up More of Your Time to Focus on Small Business Saturday
If you’re too overwhelmed tending to business necessities like payroll, health benefits and administration, compliance, and HR tasks to spend time setting your business up for success, working with a Professional Employer Organization, or PEO, could be your ideal solution. A PEO service provider can help your business streamline operations so you can become more efficient and profitable.
PEOs specialize in the management of administrative and human resource functions. Think of it as your small business’ outsourced HR department. Working with SWBC PEO can help small businesses like yours:
- Attract and retain top talent
- Ensure compliance with employment laws
- Free up resources to focus on core business priorities, and
- Realize cost savings from HR-related expenditures
As a small business owner, you want to use your time wisely and be as efficient as possible—especially during the busy holiday shopping season. We offer a one-stop solution to help improve your bottom line and allow you to concentrate on increasing your sales during Small Business Saturday and throughout the coming New Year!
Let Us Know What You Thought about this Post.
Put your Comment Below.