Some of you may be wondering how you can support more small, local businesses in 2024, but you’re also looking to keep that yearly budget in order! I’m sure we’ve all had that deliberating moment where we wonder should I really spend this money right now, even when it’s at a business you love. This guide is full of helpful tips to help you support small businesses without breaking the bank, and in some cases… spending no money at all!
What is a small business?
To start out, let’s go over the definition of what a small business is before we get into how you can spot your local shops. A small business is a privately owned cooperation, partnership or sole proprietorship with 1 to 99 employees!
It can be tricky to know if a business is small or not, and store size has nothing to do with it! Some businesses like floor installers, antique stores, or furniture manufacturers have to have large buildings in order to showcase their goods to you, but often times they only have a few people that work for them.
Fabricana, for example, has less than 50 employees and is considered a small business.
How do I know they’re locally owned and a small business?
When you walk up to a store, it is unlikely that you can tell if the business is locally owned or what size their employee force is. A great way to check if they are a small business is by visiting the company’s website! Typically, small businesses will say outright that they are locally owned and operated, and they will give an approximate size of their work force in their “About Us” section.
Having an about us section is considered good practise for a business to have, and if you’re looking to support small businesses you should Google them and visit their webpage to see what they say.
Why is it important to support small businesses?
Many of us get a feel good feeling when we support small businesses, but there are plenty of great reasons to support our tiny friends that can directly impact you and your community.
Small business are inherently part of the community; the people who work there are people who live in your town, on your block and probably shop at many of the same stores as you. What these businesses sell says a lot about what the people who live around them want to be buying. For example, maybe you live in a forested area–well you can bet that you’ll see more than a few plant stores nearby for all your garden needs!
Additionally, local businesses help pay your community taxes! Which means you get better infrastructure everywhere you turn and get more novelty goods as well (and more options!).
What’s the point of local, small businesses?
Businesses are there to serve the needs of the people, and with enough success it will be what brings more people to your community. Maybe someone moves to your area because it has a great bike shop which is perfect for them since they cycle to work everyday! Or your community might have a lot of daycares because the area is filled with new families. Keeping an area sustainable means everyone profits.
I don’t know about you, but local shops will often go above and beyond to service their customer too, so when my pooch developed some intense food allergies I was unable to buy generic brands! But my local pet-store had my back and have even offered to specially make treats that my dog can enjoy! You won’t see a chain store doing that anytime soon.
Why is it more important now than ever to shop local?
In 2020 more than 92% of small businesses saw a massive impact on their revenue and over 800,000 people lost their jobs. The pandemic hit small businesses the hardest, and most job loses were seen in this sector. This has resulted in many of our local and small businesses closing, while corporate giants saw massive net-profits which increased in many cases as much as 30%!
Essentially, small businesses are a dying breed!
So, how can I support local businesses?
In short, buy from them! But like we mentioned above, sometimes you can’t always afford to spend your dough. The best secondary option in order to support small and local businesses is to interact with them!
You may not be able to buy specially baked goods every day, but someone else might, so helping these businesses to get in front of as many eyes as possible is a must.
- Leave a Google review. Giving a great review on Google can increase the search-ability of a company massively! And your positive words may be the deciding factor for a potential customer to purchase local, or turn to an online-store, giant.
- Interact with them on social media. If the local business you love has a Facebook, Twitter (X), Instagram, Pinterest or YouTube just leaving a comment can change their business for the better. The more people that interact with an image on Facebook, or comment on a video on YouTube, the more the algorithm pushes that content for other people to see. Your 1 comment of “looks great!” can bring 5 to 50 new people to a post! And the more, the merrier. So if you love a business near you, comment, comment comment!
- Share your content. If you love to post about your makes or maybe you love visiting places around the city and creating videos, then make sure to comment, tag, and share with your local business. Naming the company you love in a video or tagging them in your post can increase that business’s visitor rate by hundreds!
- Visit their website and stay a while. This may seem silly, but if you Google a business you love and visit them from the results presented to you that actually helps to get more people to their website! Google sees that you want to go to that site, you stay there a while so that means you trust that site, and if you do it again after that Google starts to learn that this site is worth showing to more people, too!
- Use key words. Following the steps above, it is also helpful to use keywords pertaining to that businesses. For Fabricana searching “Fabrics Fabricana,” “sewing Fabricana,” “Coquitlam fabrics,” “sewing near me,” or “local reupholstery in my city” will increase the chances of our site being shown to people who search the same thing!
- Provide feedback. If a small business is asking for you to fill out a survey, or reply with your opinion on something consider taking the time to help them out! Your opinion is truly being heard and it can help shape the future of a business.
- Hit that share button! This is especially true for newsletters and social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. You may be thinking “I don’t have anyone to share this with,” but just clicking the share button and copying the link (on social sites) can teach the algorithm that this content is worth showing to other people! You don’t even need to share it with anyone! This also helps small businesses know what type of things their customers like to see so they can create more of it.
- And of course… buy! If you want to buy a new shirt or maybe some yarn, don’t go “oh, I can get this a bit cheaper on [large businesses’s site].” Small businesses often cannot compete with large businesses prices, but the convenience of buying something in person, knowing it fits, or feeling the fibres makes all the difference. Additionally, supporting a small business’s online store means they can bring more of that product in both in-store and online! But, if you don’t buy it then the result will be your local, small business will have to discontinue stock because of a lack of sales.
There you have it! Some inexpensive or free ways you can support small, local businesses. Many times your dollar means more to your local shop than it does to a big corporation and you get a lot more for that dollar too! Whether that is having superior customer service, the knowledge that your product is of a high quality, or simply the friendly, helpful hand of someone in your community.
Never feel poorly for being unable to financially support local or small businesses, but it is important to support them when you can! Your attention, time, and comments will always mean something to your local shop, even when they aren’t directly making a sale. Many of us got into this line of work to service the community! So, let the business in your area be a part of your community, too.
Thank you, as always, to all of our customers and followers!
