Promote Your Business on Small Business Saturday
Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday sits a day built specifically for businesses your size. While the rest of the weekend belongs to large retailers and marketplaces, this one gives shoppers a reason to choose the businesses they actually know by names.
For a small seller, it's one of the few moments in the holiday season where being small is the advantage rather than the obstacle. This guide covers what the day is, what support is available to you, and how to make the most of it, whether you sell from a storefront, online, or both.
What Small Business Saturday is
American Express created Small Business Saturday in 2010 to support small businesses struggling after the Great Recession. It falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, sitting deliberately between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two days dominated by large retailers and marketplaces.
The premise is simple. Black Friday belongs to scale. Small Business Saturday belongs to the businesses people actually know by name, and it gives shoppers a reason to choose them on purpose rather than by accident.
The scale is no longer small. Consumer spending on the day rose from $17 billion in 2023 to $22 billion in 2024, an increase of 29.4%. Small business owners estimate that close to 20% of their annual revenue comes from Small Business Saturday sales.
It's also more than a sales day. It's a community moment, and for a small seller, that emotional register is something no marketplace can compete on.
Small Business Saturday is primarily a US event, with a separate UK edition. If you sell internationally from elsewhere, you can still run a "shop small" campaign to customers in those markets, and the tactics below work for any local-and-independent positioning regardless of geography.
Check the free resources first
American Express, which founded the day, provides free Shop Small marketing materials, and eligible merchants can appear on its map of participating businesses.
Ways to Market Your Business on Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is a way to connect you to the local stores you see every day. It's an occasion to support those who are the backbone of the American economy. With great deals on unique products and services, you can find them on the street.
Running Promotions
Decide your offer early and make it specific rather than a generic percentage.
- Give your own customers early access. A code that opens a day ahead rewards the people already buying from you and pulls revenue forward.
- Add something small and free above a threshold. During a day about community, a gift reads more generously than an equivalent discount.
- Bundle. Pair a bestseller with slower stock as a "shop small" set. It solves gifting for the customer and moves inventory for you.
- Work out your margin first. Check contribution margin including fulfilment and expected returns before you set the number, not after.
Join Neighborhood Events
On this day, you can help arrange events in your town to bring together regional brands and stores. Through these opportunities, you'll create brand awareness for your store and build a network of people to help scale your business.
Customer Testimonials
Ask recent buyers for their experience by email or message, and turn the replies into posts. Social proof from real customers builds more trust than any claim you make about yourself.
Go further and run a user-generated content contest; customers share photos with your product under a branded hashtag. Use the established tags alongside your own: #SmallBusinessSaturday, #ShopSmall, #ShopLocal. Those tags carry their own audience on the day, so joining them costs nothing and extends your reach past your own followers.
Partnership with other Small Businesses
Cross-promotion is the cheapest reach available, because you're trading audiences rather than buying them.
- If you have a storefront: team up with a neighbouring business; a cafe supplying drinks in your space, or a joint offer valid at both.
- If you sell online: run a cross-promotion with a non-competing brand in an adjacent category. Feature each other's products, bundle across both stores, or swap a discount code in each other's order confirmations.
- Either way: a shared giveaway with two or three complementary small brands reaches every participant's audience at once.
Giveaways and Contests
Create buzz on social media platforms to grab a wider audience for your business, engaging with them in terms of comments, tags, and shares. This creates positive word-of-mouth that can bring exponential growth to your business.
Work With Micro-Influencers
A micro-influencer who has genuinely used your product will outperform a larger account reading from a brief. Their audience is smaller, closer, and more likely to act on a recommendation, which is exactly the dynamic Small Business Saturday runs on.
Approach them well ahead of the day; the week before is already too late for anyone worth working with.
Publicity
Participate in local outlet stories conducted by the local media. Through this, you can share your special offerings, Small Business Saturday plans, milestones, and complimentary items, creating excitement for customers to purchase your products.
Reminder Message
Most customers who intend to support you will simply forget.
- Send a build-up email, a reminder the day before, and a short one on the morning itself.
- Use SMS or WhatsApp for the final reminder; where you have permission, it's the message people actually see on a busy Saturday.
- Reveal the offer progressively rather than all at once, so each message gives a reason to open.
- Recover abandoned carts on the day itself; on a one-day event, a same-day nudge is far more effective than one sent 48 hours later.
Make Sure You Can Take the Order
A campaign that works and a store that can't keep up is worse than no campaign, because you've paid to disappoint people.
Before the day: reconcile stock on the products you're promoting, decide what happens when something sells out, test checkout end to end on a phone, confirm every payment method with a live transaction, and publish delivery timelines and your returns policy where buyers can see them before ordering.
Small Business Saturday customers are choosing you deliberately over a marketplace. A cancelled order or a missed delivery costs more here than it would on any other day.
Keep the Customers Afterwards
The point of the day isn't the Saturday. It's that people who have never bought from you now have.
Get the first order right: accurate tracking, proactive messages about any delay, an easy exchange. Follow up within a few weeks with something useful rather than another discount. And treat the new buyers as a group you work deliberately, not as names that blend into your general list.
Leaving them with a sense of happiness:
Competing with prominent businesses is crucial during the holiday season, but Small Business Saturday offers a unique opportunity to gain customers who are eager to support their local community.
By creating flyers and posters and collaborating with other local businesses, you can share the message of "shop small" and "welcome to the neighborhood." This gives customers a special feeling about their shopping experience. Customers also feel that a community partnership is a win-win solution, which allows them to have lasting positive memories in your store.
Run Your Store on One Platform
Promotions, stock, payments, delivery and customer follow-up all have to hold together on a one-day event.
ZenBasket brings them into one place: discounts and coupons including Buy X Get Y and free-gift offers, gift cards, pre-order and waiting list for when stock runs out, inventory across locations, multiple payment gateways, courier integrations, plus email, SMS and WhatsApp marketing, loyalty and referral programmes, and abandoned cart recovery.
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Planning the rest of the weekend? Get the store itself ready first: Black Friday readiness checklist → · Then plan your offers: Black Friday campaigns that protect margin → · And keep the customers you win: Post-BFCM retention tactics →