Your loyal customers would love to support you but they probably don’t know how to do it (other than buy from you, of course).
Support small business – it’s a thing now and that’s great.
However, it can help you and your fellow small business owners even more if people knew exactly how to support small business.
There are simple yet impactful things your customers and prospects an do but people need to be asked. And they want it to be simple too.
With the pandemic and so many small businesses closing their doors, reducing their hours, and struggle to find employees, there’s not a better time to support small business.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of ways you can ask people to support small business (especially your small business)!
1. Ask for a follow on social media
A simple follow, like, or share can make a world of a difference to the exposure you receive as a small business. People spend an average of 145 minutes on social media a day. It takes less than a second to click a button, leaving 144 minutes to get their social media fix in other places. To make it easy, send them the link so all they have to is click it, then click “like.”
2. Create interactive social media posts
You can ask them to follow and like you but if you don’t make regular and attention-grabbing posts, they don’t have a reason to follow you. Create an environment that they want to interact with.
More than 50% of social media viewers spend zero time in their feeds, but instead live in the stories. So not only make posts to your page but also to your stories. Here’s how to do that in Facebook for example…
3. Ask them to interact with their social media
Ask your audience to interact. Have an engagement question within the post. For example: “Like or share this post if you have ever shopped with us,” “Comment with your favorite product you’ve purchased or would like to purchase”, or “Tag a friend you think should shop with us.”
4. Ask them to write a review
Everyone knows Google reviews sell. Qualtrics XM says that 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. That means there’s a 7% chance that someone won’t buy your product because there are no reviews. Combat this percentage by asking all customers to leave you a quick review and consider taking it a step further by incentivizing the review with a discount on a future purchase or their name in a larger drawing after a review is made.
Again, send them a link so all they have to do is ‘click here’ and write a quick review.
5. Ask them to tell their family and friends about you
How many times have you heard, “oh my cousin or best friend told me to come to check you guys out?” Something so simple brings in new customers. So, don’t hesitate to say “tell your friends/family about us” as they walk out the door. Or put the request on every receipt or every invoice and hang a sign.
6. Have them sign-up for email or text messages
Give them another chance to see your small business from their phone or computer. They may hesitate because they don’t want you to spam them, but reassure them as you ask for their email that you’ll never spam them and that this will keep them in the loop for sales and new products.
7. Ask them to share their product pictures
Whether you offer food, clothes or you remodeled their kitchen, ask them to snap a picture of their purchase and share it on social media. This is another type of review but it directly reaches the customer’s followers that may not even know about your small business. And research tells us that consumers buy from those they trust and there’s no greater trust in a company than when we see our friends and family sharing about their great experiences with products/services.
Help your customers and prospects and the general public support small business. Let’s make 2022 the year of the Small Business Comeback!
