Small Business Saturday 2022

Small Business Saturday takes place on the first Saturday of every December in the UK, and is a non-commercial campaign to highlight small businesses and encourage consumers to ‘shop local’. In 2022 the initiative celebrates its tenth anniversary in the UK.

Whilst it may be too late for this year to create an event for the day itself, given it’s Saturday 3rd December, it’s not too late to ‘piggy back’ some of the online activity, and perhaps make a diary note for next year!

The Small Business Saturday website includes lots of information around the campaign, and highlights many small businesses who have fully embraced the opportunities for promotion and business development.

There are links on the site to advertise your small business in their directory, download logos for use on your website and social media, as well as a marketing pack to download. There’s still time to utilise some of these resources if you can spare a few minutes to set up some social posts over the next few days or perhaps create an email to your customers to let them know you’re supporting the initiative in a small way.

It’s also a potentially timely reminder that you’re there and ready to help them!

You can also connect with the initiative on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where they’ll share any mentions they can. With over 100 million people recorded as having seen tweets for #SmallBizSatUK and #SmallBusinessSaturday, that may gain you a large extra following!

The other huge benefit that any small business may feel as a result of the event is the ripples from the media coverage that is bound to follow, so don’t feel that you can’t benefit from the day if you haven’t got a plan in place for this weekend. The ‘Shop Local’ premise has gained momentum since the pandemic, and with careful fostering as we head into the festive season should continue to do so.

Large corporates can’t possibly emulate the approach that small businesses can take, in building and reinforcing relationships, and providing personalised service, so these are perfect points of leverage.

In the past we’ve run small events for the day, opening in the days when we had an office for nibbles and refreshments, for clients to drop of Tax Return records or have a Saturday appointment, which was very well received. These were never big budget productions, but gave us a chance to see and chat to clients and to speak to other local businesses, and one year receive a visit from the local mayor!

If you’ve been ahead enough to get a campaign or event set up for this weekend, or have been involved in any of the Small Business Saturday activities, mentorships or tour programme, we’d love to hear about it! Please send us as many details as you’d like and we’ll share them on our social platforms and perhaps add an update to this post too.

We hope your plans go well!