How to support small businesses online and in-person
While the pandemic may be mostly behind us, many U.S. small businesses remain in recovery mode after a rough couple years. Now, as recession concerns grow, local retailers could use increased support from their friends and neighbors. Here is how you can give the many small businesses in the U.S. what they need, while getting what you want from them, whether you’re shopping in the physical store or online.
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Key takeaways
One of the most compelling reasons to purchase from small businesses at their brick and mortar locations is the impact on the local economy.
An American Independent Business Alliance analysis found that 48 percent of each purchase made at local independent businesses was recirculated locally, as opposed to less than 14 percent of purchases at chain stores. Therefore, shopping from them creates more revenue for other local businesses and reinforces more local jobs. According to a Small Business Economic Impact Study from American Express, an average of two-thirds of every dollar ($0.67) consumers spend at U.S. small businesses stays in the local community.
The data showing that shopping from local shops helps the environment is also strong. Approximately 90 percent of consumables are moved by sea, reports UK Research and Innovation, and the shipping industry is responsible for around 940 million tonnes of CO2 annually. By purchasing things created and sold close to home, you can do your part to reduce the damage.
Additionally, local businesses are invested in the wellbeing of their community. SCORE reports that small businesses donate 250 percent more than larger businesses to local nonprofits and community causes.
Buy gift cardsAnother way you can support local small businesses is buying gift cards when they offer them. The U.S. gift card market is huge, valued at $162.11 billion in 2022.
Gift cards are not only desirable as presents, but when you give them the retailer gains with new customers visiting their stores, thus increasing revenue. According to a 2019 study by First Data, almost 90 percent of consumers who are given a gift card from a small business they’ve never visited say they plan to return and shop there. Another First Data study found the average consumer spends $59 more than the original value of their gift card,
Order take-outIf you want to support your local eatery, but would like to have the food delivered, you may want to avoid third-party companies. A 2020 National Restaurant Association survey found that 66 percent of respondents ordered takeout or delivery for dinner within the past week. Yet third-party platforms like Doordash, UberEats, and Postmates charge those businesses a commission, which can range from 6 percent to to 30 percent.
To help keep that money with the small business you have a couple options: pick up the food yourself (they may even do curbside delivery so you don’t have to leave your car) or order directly with the restaurant if they have delivery service. Even if there is an extra charge, at least the money will be going to the delivery driver and it won’t cut into the small business as profits.
Use word-of-mouth marketingWhen you want to help promote a small business, get the word out by telling others how great it is. Consumers tend to trust personal reviews by people they know.
Vocalizing the virtues of a business can be a powerful way to get people to go into a retailer. According to a Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report, 92 percent of consumers say they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising. And, according to Word-of-Mouth, 85 percent of small businesses are discovered by customers this way.
Tips for supporting small businesses online Leave positive reviewsAccording to Clutch, 88 percent of small businesses monitor their online reputation on a quarterly basis because they know how important it is to consumers. BrightLocal found 63 percent of consumers use Google to find the reviews, 54 percent use Facebook, and 32 percent use Yelp. BrightLocal also discovered that 77 percent of consumers ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ read online reviews when browsing for local businesses.
Being positive reviews translates into higher revenue. For example, a study conducted by Harvard found a one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a 5-9 percent increase in revenue.
Continue to shop local virtuallyWant to shop from a small business but do it from home? No problem. Chances are, they have a website designed just for that. Some 71 percent of small businesses now have their own websites, according to a 2021 Top Design Firms report. Small businesses across the U.S. got on board with a commerce functionality during the COVID-19 pandemic, selling their products online, including webinars, classes and other non-tangible services. To make it easier for both of you, the majority of small businesses also accept major credit cards — making it easier to earn rewards for shopping.
Sign up for their email listsTo keep abreast of what your local retailers are selling, sign up for their email lists, too. Often you can be alerted to special deals or sales that are coming up. And when you know, you can also share the good news. Email marketing is beneficial for small businesses because it’s inexpensive and effective. According to a Litmus report, companies generate 42 dollars for every dollar they spend on email marketing, and Emarsys research revealed that 81 percent of small businesses depend on email marketing to attract customers.
If you’d rather have the notifications come straight to your phone as a text, that too may be available.
Share their social postsAnother way to get the message out is to share online reviews on social media platforms. Though you may not be speaking to people directly, users will know you’re in the neighborhood and that your recommendations are genuine. Moreover, you’ll be able to get the word out to hundreds, or even thousands, of potential customers very quickly.
A Visual Objects survey found that 25 percent of small businesses consider social media their most successful digital marketing tool in 2022, with over two-thirds of them using the platforms. Major social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin, are particularly effective places to post. Tag the business so they know you’re spreading the word. If you have a picture of the products or, better yet, of you shopping from the store, all the better.
FAQ SectionYou can support small businesses by sharing positive reviews via word-of-mouth and on online platforms.
To find small businesses, search social media platforms, read review websites, and ask friends and community members for recommendations.
Small businesses not only provide jobs for locals, but when they occupy space in a community, blight is reduced and other businesses can thrive.
Shopping from small businesses helps stimulate the local economy, promotes diversity, and adds to a unique local flavor of your neighborhood.
15 Smart Ways For Businesses In A Growth Stage To Save Money
As the old saying goes, “You have to spend money to make money.” However, it’s critical for a startup business to stay lean if it wants to ensure healthy growth. There are multiple potential financial pitfalls that could set a business back during a growth period, from hiring employees too soon to making risky investments.
While the ultimate goal is to get into an optimal rhythm in terms of cash flow, saving wherever you can is important at this time. Below, 15 members of Forbes Coaches Council offer their top tips on how to save money when a business is in a growth stage.
Forbes Coaches Council members share ways for businesses in a growth stage to save money.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. Focus On Efficiency
When a company is in a growth stage, focus on efficiency. This isn't sexy, but it's the truth! It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of growth and think that you need to throw money at all your problems. But it's just not true. You can double down on the things that work and cut the things that don't; you'll find yourself with a lot more money in your pocket than you would have otherwise. - Willena Long, Career Boss Academy
2. Go Where Your Customer Is
Understand your customer segment and how to reach them. Marketing is not the same as sales, and brand recognition doesn’t necessarily translate into revenues if the people who know your brand are not the buyers. B2B businesses need very different tools than B2C. Go where your customer is, not necessarily where you are. - Bill Berman, Berman Leadership Development
3. Be Aware Of Online Memberships
I believe money needs to come and go; it has to be in flow. As we attract money, one needs to allow money to “get out” and not be “stuck.” My piece of advice is to be aware of the renewal of online memberships. Is it something you need or something you forgot you have? If it’s the latter, there is no positive flow to reinforce the energy of money fluidity. - Gorana Sandric, Sandric Consulting GmbH
4. Perfect Your Pitch
Invest some time into getting free publicity. There are so many ways you can get exposure for who you are and what you’re doing that cost nothing except a bit of time. Learn how to create a perfect pitch, and then find ways to get yourself free publicity through media, podcasts, blogging, vlogging and social media outreach. - Bronwen Sciortino, sheIQ Life Pty Ltd
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
5. Consider Your Evolving Cash Flow
What story is your cash flow telling? How is it evolving each month? What are the key financial variables that affect the cash flow? Which of these variables can have an upside? How do the company sales, profit and cash conversion cycle strategies affect cash? What are the ways to improve cash? What opportunity in pricing strategy, operations productivity or market position can affect cash? - Dennis Foo, Pu Xin ASPIRA Advisory Limited - Shanghai | Hong Kong
6. Leverage All Resources
Conserving cash and keeping a hawkish eye on cash flow is important for a startup. So being able to leverage “other people’s money” is a great strategy if the business can do so. This is not just about cash but resources in general. How might you tap shared services instead of hiring your own? What can be DIY or automated efficiently? Productivity and efficacy are key boosters for startups. - Thomas Lim, Thrive Consulting Pte Ltd
7. Spend Intentionally
Invest in processes and items that are on a needs-only basis. Be intentional and have a purpose for what the investment or expense is going to help you do. It can be easy to invest and spend money on processes that will grow your business exponentially, but it’s also important to have that cash flow as well as the ability to pay back debt that is reasonable. - Lauren Najar, Lauren Najar Coaching LLC
8. Listen To Your Gut Before Making Major Buying Decisions
Ask yourself this one question before buying anything: When this shows up on the balance sheet next review, will it make me glad I bought it? If thoughts of the purchase bring you down in energy in the future, it is not the time to buy. Your gut knows. Listen to it. I ask myself this question before making any major decision to buy. - Dr. Jayne Gardner
9. Hire Multifaceted Team Members
Look to hire people who can truly wear multiple hats and hire not just for the role in question but the one that hasn’t been questioned yet. Startups must thrive in the gray areas and anticipate the unknown—in order to do this, you must be agile and smart with your talent hiring. People with diverse backgrounds may be able to do more than expected as long as you prepare them in advance. - Joshua Miller, Joshua Miller Executive Coaching
10. Know The Difference Between Costs And Investments
Be clear about the difference between investments and costs and spend accordingly. Invest in areas that will truly leverage your time and allow you to bring even more value to the business. This approach can accelerate your results. Look at any expenditures based on their overall importance to growth and the right time to make them. - Neena Newberry, Newberry Solutions
11. Curate A Clear Strategy
Be diligent with your priorities and have a clear strategy; this will guide your decision on spending. Then when you line up your spending with these priorities, be rigorous about shopping around for the services you may be looking to engage with. There are a million ways to achieve the outcome, and part of being fiscally responsible is ensuring you have done your research on what will help grow your business. - April Sabral, April Sabral Leadership
12. Prioritize Decisions For Next Year
It’s a misnomer that startups do most of the growing. Mid-size businesses tend to grow faster and provide more jobs than startups. The trick is to prioritize programs and expenditures this year that will produce meaningful growth next year. I structure leadership councils to grapple with one core question: “What one thing should we do now to accelerate us toward our BHAG (big hairy audacious goal)? That yields growth. - Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
13. Know When To Negotiate
Negotiating everything is a great way to save money when a company is in a growth stage. Just because you’re new does not mean you don’t have buying power or can’t exercise influence. The savings you negotiate can be redirected toward more staff, better benefits for your existing staff, tech support or a customer relationship management tool that will strengthen your workflow processes and save even more money! - Cathy Lanzalaco, Inspire Careers LLC
14. Automate Processes
The secret lies in the application of cutting-edge technologies. By automating processes and integrating available tools, a growing firm can reduce operating costs. For instance, use a unified platform to send campaigns, advertise on social media and boost search engine exposure. This will lower the time and money spent on such complex processes, allowing for a greater focus on corporate growth. - Nabil Bouassaba, Ai 4 Ei
15. Fix Your Leaky Pipelines
Map out the user journey and look for ways to improve conversions at crucial decision points. We recently did this for our app, focusing on organic traffic. Three improvements resulted in an 89% revenue increase. This was money we were just leaving on the table by not optimizing conversions. Now, we have a stronger base to scale from. - Gabriella Goddard, Brainsparker Global
How small and midsize businesses can take advantage of text-to-image AI
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Having the chance to try DALL-E 2, the new AI system from OpenAI that can create realistic images from natural language, was pretty extraordinary.
There’s no question the system is still in its infancy, but it’s clear the technology is moving quickly and we’re already starting to see improved text-to-image models. Google Brain’s Imagen, which can generate photorealistic images of a scene given a textual description and Meta’s Make-A–Scene, which allows users to draw a freeform digital sketch to accompany a text prompt, are both promising examples.
This technology isn’t just for large tech companies, either. There are a number of ways small and midsize businesses can take advantage of text-to-image technology today.
On average, it’s recommended that small businesses spend 7–8% of their gross revenue on marketing. And yet, many are only spending 3–5%. Tools like DALL-E 2 can let entrepreneurs punch above their weight even if they don’t have the luxury of hiring talent to produce customizable, branded graphics.
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Register HereAs the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. As DALL-E 2 and other text-to-image systems become more widely available, it makes sense that marketers will start using them for their campaigns.
Take, for example, a brand that sells fresh seafood. While it makes sense to include enticing imagery in its emails, there’s no real advantage to doing its own photo shoots over using stock photos. Subscriptions to stock photo catalogs for commercial use can easily cost hundreds of dollars a month, which is hard for smaller brands to justify.
Enter DALL-E 2. The model lets marketers combine the creativity of hiring an in-house graphic designer with potential price savings. Here, for example, is what DALL-E 2 produces when asking for “a photo depicting a mouth-watering salmon with lemon slices.”
While these images are indeed mouth-watering, what happens when the supply of salmon unexpectedly dips, and our offering this week shifts from salmon to cod? For small businesses that need to pivot at a moment’s notice, the ability to generate new images in 30 seconds is priceless.
Graphic creation by DALL-E 2DALL-E 2 entered the popular consciousness not because of its ability to faithfully mirror the world, but because of its ability to create wonderfully stylized images.
Consider this watercolor of a panda wearing a hat. The image is playful, well-structured, and does not exist in any stock photo catalog. This is why DALL-E 2 is exciting — it opens new opportunities, especially for small businesses.
The success of tools like DALL-E 2 may be daunting for designers out there worried about AI automating their roles, especially since some experts predict 99.9% of online content will be AI-generated by 2030. But we believe DALL-E 2 won’t replace any jobs; it will instead become a part of a marketer’s toolkit and skillset.
The output quality of DALL-E 2 varies dramatically depending on what prompts are fed into it. Generating a good prompt is a very creative process, similar to writing copy itself. If the future includes marketers in hybrid roles using these tools for inspiration, then this will increasingly become a domain skill.
DALL-E 2: InpaintingOne of the most exciting features that DALL-E 2 offers is automatic inpainting. Think of it as having a magic wand that marketers can wave to change images however they want.
This is best seen through example. Here, DALL-E 2 was given the first image and told to insert a corgi in a specific location. The model understood the context of the image well enough to understand that it was being asked to render the dog inside a painting and was able to compose in a style that matched.
Example from https://openai.com/dall-e-2/This fascinating feature holds much value, especially for brands who want to capture their products in different locations or unique scenarios. Imagine placing your product in backdrops you can’t visit or seeing how George Washington would have looked while sipping a Coca-Cola.
DALL-E 2 can remarkably change the game for marketers to where they’ll be more limited by their creativity than by time and budget.
LimitationsWhile there is reason to be excited about the future, the current technology still has limitations. It struggles to generate photorealistic people, and often fails to generate coherent text. Moreover, there have been some significant criticisms of DALL-E 2 on the issue of bias. For example, when tasked with generating “portrait of a smart person” DALL-E Mini – a lower-cost, open source implementation of DALL-E 2 — generated nine pictures of white men in formal attire.
OpenAI recently released an update aimed at mitigating some of these issues of bias, but it remains to be seen if they are truly solved. In the meantime, marketers using these tools will have to be careful to avoid unintentionally propagating biases.
Wrapping upSo would we want DALL-E 2, in its current form, as a tool in our marketing toolbox? Absolutely, and for many purposes: images that can be used as generated, to give starting points for further editing; to help brainstorm; to convey ideas to graphic artists; to run efficient A/B tests on creative; and to create fantastical eye-catching images that today could be done only by artists. Despite its limitations, there are also opportunities.
Over the past six months we’ve seen growing interest in breakthrough text-to-image technology. As technology continues to move quickly, better, more improved models will continue to emerge, and the use cases for brands will only grow.
Robert Huselid and Tom Dinitz are data scientists at Klaviyo, a unified customer platform for email, SMS and more, that empowers online brands to own their data and grow on their own terms.
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