But small businesses are special. They revive communities, keep money and resources in the hands of hardworking people, and deliver quality with care that most big brands can miss out on. 

And this sentiment is what led to the start of Small Business Saturday, tucked in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The event put a spotlight on small businesses and gave them a space in the holiday rush. 

If you are running a small business and want your brand to be a prominent part of the holiday sale season, you need to make the most of this shopping event too.

While traditionally small businesses rely on word of mouth and organic engagement rates, Small Business Saturday calls for a little more. You have to compete with every other small business with competitive rates and service. And getting creative with marketing and branding campaigns are your tools to do that. 

Before we break down the marketing and branding strategies that can make Small Business Saturday a success for you, let’s take a look at the event’s origins. 

Small Business Saturday: The Origin Story and Its Significance 

What makes Small Business Saturday so important? Well it falls right into the middle of the busiest shopping weekend in the USA, Canada, and many European countries. While other events exist for appreciating small businesses in the communities they serve, Small Business Saturday is all about driving sales.  

American Express started the annual event in 2010 to raise awareness of the importance of small businesses for the economy and give them a spotlight between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Within  5 years of launch,  this day saw the revenue scale touch billions with a record breaking $16.2 billion in 2015. In 2019, this grew all the way up to $19.6 billion with people supporting many independent retailers and restaurant chains on this day. 

As spending breaks records every year and customer sentiment continues to tilt in favor of small businesses, the world is your oyster this Small business Saturday. Businesses do not have to stick to local sales alone but can reach the whole world via the internet and marketing strategies. And even if you choose to stay local, you can ensure all eyes are on you.

How? Keep reading.

Small Business Saturday Marketing – Why you need to focus on design

Can you hazard a guess as to how many small businesses there are in the USA alone? The number will probably shock you. There are over 30 million small businesses in the USA, as of Aug 2020. 2021 surely has seen considerable growth in this number too. 

To truly stand out and attract quality leads this holiday season, you have to go beyond existing on social media and running a couple of ads. You need a solid branding and marketing campaign. 

Since the pandemic, the buzz on Social media and other channels has increased exponentially for small business promotions. The internet now has more small businesses than one can truly see in a lifetime. So how can you make your campaigns stand out? 

• Start by creating a stellar and meaningful brand identity for your small businesses. Or if you already have one that could use an upgrade or refresh, get that done! Branding is not an activity for large corporations alone. It can give you a great advantage in standing out amidst the crowd. 
• Focus on creating an omnichannel presence across social media without letting go of your traditional offline marketing channels. A healthy mix of these will ensure your business reaches maximum people in minimum time. 
• Employ graphic design and video across all marketing channels. These mediums are highly interactive and far more engaging than just text. Videos and images also hold consumers’ attention for a longer time. 
• Segment and personalize your designs based on the intent of marketing (brand awareness, sales, or engagement) and target audience characteristics. This will make your campaign effective and meaningful.

Small Business Saturday Marketing: 8 Designs You Need 

In the last section, we stressed on the need for having quality graphic design and motion graphics as part of your Small Business Saturday campaigns. TLDR? They enhance your messaging and make customer acquisition even easier. 

So here is a list of design assets and ideas by the Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video teams. Employ these to turn your Small Business Saturday campaigns in 2021 into your most successful ones yet. 

1) Branding Assets 

As a small business, it is quite normal for you to have only basic branding elements in place while you try to build your business. But for campaigns of this magnitude, you need your branding to be iron clad to have an impact on your audience. So before you launch campaigns and start putting the word out there, you need some designs on hand and some design choices made: 

• A professional logo that you can use across web and print marketing materials. 
• Brand colors and fonts that closely reflect your brand personality and send the right message about your business to your customers. 
• A basic styling guide that has details on logo positioning, watermarks for product photos, and any specific filters for social media.

If you have these in hand, you can present a professional and consistent persona to your customers. Branding consistency makes brand recall and affinity easier for potential customers. Mixed messages make it hard for customers to understand you, so these design assets come in handy from the get-go.

Kimp Tip: While designing your brand’s visual identity, choose colors and fonts that resonate with your industry, target audience, and business’ USP. For example, if you are a business selling trendy jewellery, the visual identity must include dynaic colors and distinctiveness instead of a mix of sobre colors. 

Read our guide on building a visual identity that promotes your brand here. Don’t shy away from this process assuming the cost of it. The cost of bad branding is much higher. And if you need help getting these designs done, consider a Kimp Graphics unlimited graphic design service subscription. 

2) Website/Landing Page Design 

With your branding in place, it is time to move on to cementing your online identity. And that begins with your website. Even for non-ecommerce brands, a website is a must. When you are promoting your business during an event like Small Business Saturday, you will attract a lot of attention. With a professional and well-designed website, you can turn that attention into revenue. 

So what should a small business website have going for it for a successful Small Business Saturday?

• Your website’s design must be in line with your brand identity and follow the same language including but not limited to font, colors, imagery, and styling. 
• As a small business, you have the advantage of having a product-focused company. Champion that and feature your products, services, and their specialties on your website. 
• Include social proof (reviews, testimonials, etc. either in the main banner or subsequent pages. 
• Promote your Small Business Saturday promotions and advertisements on your website so that the visitors can access them easily.

Kimp Tip: We stress on the importance of consistency in branding and website design because when you receive traffic from advertisements, users expect a seamless transition. Abrupt design changes can shock them and harm your brand identity. 

The power of visuals is relevant here too. Choose a decluttered, aesthetic, and visual-heavy website design for best results.

3) Storefront and Store Decor designs 

If the website is your digital address, your store is your tangible, physical address. And it requires just as much care and creativity. Often businesses spend a lot of time, money, and resources in presenting the perfect brand identity on the internet, but neglect in-store marketing. And you don’t want to fall into that trap.

Imagine this. You have a store in one of the busiest neighbourhoods in town. There are many large brands next to you. Obviously, they have billboards, posters, and standees proclaiming their presence. Now, if you want to compete with them, do you think a simple signage would do? 

No, you need something that tells the customer you are a small business and need their patronage on Small Business Saturday. And that is called storefront marketing. 

This includes LED signs, boards, and posters that promote your products, current offers, and other attractions in the store. Try to install these at least a couple weeks before Small Business Saturday so that customers can remember and seek you out. But whether you can do that or not, you definitely need that signage up in days leading up and of course on the Saturday itself. 

And once the customer is in, you have to always attempt upselling. Yes, just like ecommerce stores. Fill your store with information on offers, product guides, look books, and ads. 

4) Product Curations and Bundle designs 

We cannot forget or ignore that Small Business Saturday falls right in the middle of a series of major shopping events. And it is so close to Christmas, New Year, and the holiday gifting season. People always struggle to choose what is best for themselves and their loved ones. If you make this easy, then *drum roll* you get their business.

An advantage of running a small business is the level of attention you can shower on your customers and the personalized service you bring to the table. This is something most big brands struggle to achieve. 

You can leverage this superpower of yours by creating: 

• Gift guides based on age, occasion, and customer preference you have noticed until now 
• Holiday-themed content like “Best Christmas gifts for coworkers”, “Top 5 decor accessories”, and so on.
• Product bundles that have some similarity and offer special discounts for bulk purchases.

But how do you present them? 

• Well, one idea is to create posters, flyers, or pamphlets of these curated messages for in-store and local marketing
• You can also create social media content (static and video) and advertisements based on these. 
• Create a lookbook from the curated content and share with your email newsletter subscribers.  

Kimp Tip: Gift guides and curated product lists will come in handy for you during the course of the Small Business Saturday promotions. You can use them in every channel and get a great reception. So, having these designs prepared early will help you fill up your marketing calendar with ease.

Engaging an unlimited design service like Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video makes it easy to create an entire campaign with some standard and foundational design assets. And they come at a flat monthly fee.

5) Newsletters Designs 

Small businesses favor marketing channels that reward their efforts. So, email marketing is a vital part of every Small Business Saturday promotion. In fact most marketers consider email to be more effective than social media in customer acquisition, sales, and retention too. This is a medium that can do it all. 

Some newsletter designs to have in handy for use throughout the Small Business Saturday campaign (and for your holiday marketing) are:

• mall Business Saturday announcement template/newsletter design to send leading upto the actual date.
• Sale announcement, countdown, and discount coupon to share with customers close to the date 
• Product emails that focus on individual products, gift guides, and other curations. 
• Abandoned cart emails for Ecommerce stores
• Stock update emails to generate FOMO and sales. This can work for both brick and mortar and Ecommerce brands. 
• Thank you email for sharing your success with your customers once the event is over. You can also include any ongoing offers and in-stock offers to keep the sale momentum going. 

Read our guide on newsletter ideas for more ideas and insights. 

Kimp Tip: You can improve your newsletter open rate and click through rate by including interactive and engaging content such as Emojis, GIFs, images, and videos. This makes it easier for the reader to peruse through the content and understand the message than typical contextual content. 

6) Print advertisement designs 

Traditions are important because they hold a lot of value for many people. Print advertisements may feel outdated and inefficient to some, but there is a large audience for them. If the target audience for your business falls in this category, then you must definitely give it a go.

A print advertisement can be as small or large as you wish it to be. If you are a store that is offering discounts on this Small Business Saturday, you can print coupons in the advert and encourage customers to bring it for redemption.

Print advertisement ideas that work well for Small Business Saturday include:  

• Sale Announcements 
• Product-focused advertising 
• Discount or coupon codes 
• New product launches 
• Invite to an in-store event 

Kimp Tip: In most cases, you can repurpose the concept and look and feel of digital advertisement for the print medium. But you cannot use the exact same files. Designs meant for print and digital have significant differences though that may not be obvious if you don’t have a lot of experience with design. 

The Kimp Graphics team ensures that we only deliver high-quality print-friendly designs when our customers want to repurpose web designs. Book a call with the team today to know more about the subscription! 

7) Social Media Content designs 

Social media is a goldmine for small businesses. You can reach customers across the world without investing in expensive campaigns. All you need is quality content and social proof to get ahead in this space. 

Your social media content has the potential of making your Small Business Saturday great even beyond your imagination. It must be a mix of engagement, information, and inspiration. So what can you create on social media to achieve this?

• Instagram content with high-quality product images, catalog, gift guides, with supporting informational content. 
• Social proof that validates your business, the services or products you offer, and encourages customers to purchase from you. 
• Twitter and Facebook content promoting your ongoing sales and discount campaigns while also directing traffic to your website. 
• Small Business Saturday contests that promote your page. You can host giveaways for the winners of  the said contest. 
• Collaboration with other small businesses to mutually promote your product and encourage cross-purchasing. 

Kimp Tip: Your social media content serves as a portfolio for your business. Most small businesses even work out of Instagram without a website. In such cases, your content has to be of the best quality and reflect your brand in the best light. 

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8) Video Marketing designs 

If there is one content format that everyone likes, it is video. Yes, it is mostly popular on social media but you can also use your video in newsletters and for in-store marketing as well. In a world where TikTok and short form videos are all the rage, businesses cannot ignore the power of video.

So create as many videos as you can. Any information you want to convey, find a way to repurpose into a video. Most social media platforms push video content more than any other format. So, if you can’t beat them, we suggest joining them.

Some video formats to concentrate for Small Business Saturday marketing are: 

• Instagram Reels featuring your products, customer reviews, store walkthrough
• Product demo videos, if relevant 
• Animated videos promoting your brand and the story behind it 

Once you have them in hand, you can always repurpose them across different channels to maximize distribution. If you are camera shy, check our guide on faceless Instagram Reel ideas (ones that don’t require you to be on camera) for some inspiration.

Need help creating videos? With a Kimp Video subscription, you can create videos every month at a flat monthly fee. 

Get ready for a successful Small Business Saturday (and Holiday Season) with Kimp

Let’s cut to the chase. We know that the holiday season does not provide a level playing field. Big brands tend to fill up the airwaves. But we are here to assure you that you too can create a stellar campaign that matches, and maybe even beats out, the content of these brands.

All you need is a team that understands you and is passionate about delivering the best. Thankfully, with Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video, we can deliver all of that to you.

Sign up for the free trial today to get started today!