Wellness

Ways to keep your small business healthy

Executive Summary:

As the pandemic persists, small businesses are struggling to forecast next steps. The one consistency throughout has been the mutual support among other small businesses in the same predicament. Ally Bowersock is the Co-owner of RunAbout Sports Roanoke. Contact her: runaboutroanoke@ gmail.com If you’re a small business owner who is looking for new business amidst all the chaos, here are a few tactics we

WEllNEss

By Ally Bowersock

have employed with some success. Gift card giveaways: Invest in however many gift cards from a local business of your choosing and select a day in the future to promote the giveaway. The key, we have found with our business and others who have reciprocated this offer, is to plan in advance for this opportunity to help drive business on otherwise slow days. For example, if you are traditionally slow on Tuesdays, pick a gift card giveaway one week out and then make an event on social media promoting the event. We’ve found this is very effective for our restaurant friends as people are planning meals for the week and can ensure supporting your business if they know in advance you are offering a promotion on a particular day.

Reciprocal benefit: once you select a gift card winner or winners, post about their win on your social media channels and tag the business to whom the gift card belongs. Your customers “win” by earning a bonus prize or prizes in the form of gift cards, and the gift card business wins by gaining exposure to your customer base- likely many new customers therein.

Social media “takeover”: Once you find a small business to support, identify a day when you will provide content to share on their channels. Advertise at least a few days in advance that the “takeover” will occur so that current followers of the business being taken over will know what’s happening and why. Takeover days are great for promoting a cause or fundraiser or to highlight something significant happening with the business providing content. Make sure you identify any hashtags unique to the business providing

content so that you engage their followers on your page. Referral reciprocity: Use business cards or any promotional card you may have to give to your customers on behalf of the business you are supporting. This is very effective for businesses who have synergy within their industries, like for us supporting local bike shops because we don’t sell bikes, but we encourage our walkers and runners to crosstrain with cycling. Our referral cards include a one-time-use coupon so there is extra incentive to visit with the referral card. One key piece here is to write the name of the business dispensing the cards on the referral card itself so that you can see where new business is generated.

If you’re interested in partnering with RunAbout Sports Roanoke on any of these ideas, please let us know: runaboutroanoke@gmail.com. Thanks for supporting local!