Holiday marketing 3: Spotlight a local business

We’re all using the same marketing theme this year: Shift Your Shopping. When we work together to spread the word, we’ll multiply how many customers we reach.

This week, we’re going to shine a spotlight on another local business near you. You can do this on Facebook or Instagram, or on your store’s own website.

Pick a great local business. You can choose a friend and fellow store owner you know well and want to feature. Or you can reach out to a store you really don’t know much about and get to know them better. Hey, you could even do both.

Stop in during their regular business hours. Look around. Ask them a few questions. You need to be able to write at least three sentences about why they are a great store and how they make the community stronger.

Shoot a photo of at least one gift item they are selling and maybe a photo showing how cute their store is.

Tell them you’ll be sharing it online. Tell them what you local hashtag is or #ShiftYourShopping so they can look for it.

Now, post your mini-story online. Include the photos, tell your three sentence story, and include the hashtag #ShiftYourShopping. Tag the business by name so they’ll be notified about it.

While you’re online, look up your fellow local stores. See if they have posted their mini-stories yet. When you find them, like and share them!

Next week, we’ll talk more about your community at large, and look at what some other communities are doing.

Shift Your Shopping is our group theme for holiday marketing this year. You have my permission to forward these articles to your local retailers, merchants association, chamber of commerce, downtown development group or any one else you think would benefit from them. All you need to do is list the author as Becky McCray of SmallBizSurvival.com and then let me know who you are sharing with.

About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband own a retail liquor store in Alva, Oklahoma, and a small cattle ranch nearby. Becky is an international speaker on small business.