First Person: How Small Business Owners Can Capitalize on Black Friday Shopping

While we, as small business owners, cannot compete with the prices at the huge chains during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we can still increase our bottom lines over the holidays. We offer a number of advantages that the madness of the frenzied stores cannot begin to touch. We need to focus on our strengths as a small business to entice the exhausted and timid holiday shoppers to flock to our stores rather than to the huge conglomerates.

Focus on Customer Service:

If you have ever been to a Wal-Mart or Target store during the Black Friday sale, you will understand the madness those supposed great deals bring to the masses. Appeal to your customers' desires for peace, tranquility and good old fashioned customer service in your advertising. If you have seen Target's commercial about the lady in red training for the mad event, you will understand what I am talking about. Focus your campaign on a fun, relaxing shopping event and many of the shoppers who avoid those horrible crowds will come to you instead.

Take Part In the Small Business Saturday Campaign

American Express has been helping small business by spreading the word about Small Business Saturday. This growing trend should help our small businesses, especially if we can continue the momentum that is being built. Use Facebook and Twitter to promote your small business. We may not be able to compete with the big ones on Friday head-to-head, but we can improve our bottom line by uniting and creating something unique to small businesses nationwide. You can also check out the 350 Project and let your customers know about it. It explains why our small businesses are so important to the economy as a whole.

Include Value-Added Promotions to Draw Customers to You:

Customers are looking for a good deal. If you can provide an extra service, they just may change their mind about where they are going to go shopping. Free gift wrapping is always a good value-added service to have during the holidays. You may also be able to offer some type of shipping that will entice the shoppers to come to your small business. Another idea for a bakery would be free samples of your decadent cookies that they could then purchase to send to family members. If you sold a couple of dozen cookies for every five samples, it would pay off by adding to your bottom line.

There are many ways we, as small business owners, can tap into the holiday buying frenzy. By avoiding the competitions price wars, we can create a shopping experience our customers will enjoy and one they will remember when next year's madness begins.

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