Small businesses, the backbone of the economy, have been hit hard by the recession. Small Business Saturday (this year on November 24th) encourages consumers to take their Holiday related shopping to their favorite local stores to help fuel the economy on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. As a proud supporter of Small Business Saturday, Bing Ads loves to highlight what small businesses have done in years past for Small Business Saturday and how you can make the most of it for your business this year.
Impact of Small Business Saturday 2011
Over 100 million people shopped at independently-owned small businesses on November 26th last year 1. American Express, founding partner of Small Business Saturday, also reported a 23% increase in Cardmember transactions at small merchants on Small Business Saturday2. One success story is from Walnut Street Traditions in Lafayette, IN who reported that Small Business Saturday last year was their best trading day in six years. Another story is from Urban Cargo in New York, NY – they tripled their customer base by promoting Small Business Saturday in 2011.2
1. Tools and resources to help you promote your small business during the busiest shopping days of the year:
- Digital banners and logos to promote your small business on your blog, website or anywhere else online.
- Signage to help attract customers which
- Social media and email templates to help drive traffic to your small business with preloaded posts, blog examples, tweets, and emails.
2. Ideas to ‘rally your community.’ Business owner or not, you can promote Small Business Saturday with posters, banners and posts for social media. You can find it all here. Remember the hashtag is #SmallBizSat.
3. Bing Ads and other supporters of the event offer further free support to help make Small Business Saturday a success for you and to help you drive business beyond the festive season. Check out what Bing Ads is doing here.
How to sign up?
You don’t have to “sign up” to be a part of Small Business Saturday. The day is for all to celebrate you and the contribution your business makes to the community and the economy. Thus, whether you are a brick-and-mortar retail store, restaurant or online-only business, just by being a small business owner, you’re already a part of it. As such, participation is as simple as being open for business this November 24th. If you have other questions around Small Business Saturday then check out these FAQ
Bing Ads, a Supporter of Small Business Saturday
We’re passionate about helping small businesses find new customers through digital advertising and we believe pay per click is an especially effective and cost efficient way to do so. Many of you already use Bing Ads knowing that you can reach 152 million unique searchers on the Yahoo! Bing Network3 who are likely to spend 22% more online than the average Internet searcher and 7.4% more than Google searchers in the US. Monday to Friday we’re almost 24/7 on standby in our forums, on Facebook , Twitter and LinkedIn to answer any questions you may have and to give you tips and advice.
If you know of a small business that can benefit from Small Business Saturday and/or advertising on Bing Ads, share this blog with them.
We wish you a prosperous Small Business Saturday and do tell us @BingBusiness how yours went using the #SmallBizSat hashtag!
1) Source: Based on 2011 Small Business Saturday Consumer Survey by Echo Research, and commissioned by American Express.
2) US American Express Card transactions at independently-owned small businesses/restaurants on 11/26/11 compared against comparable data for 11/27/10.
3) The Yahoo! Bing Network includes Microsoft and Yahoo! Core Search sites in the U.S.