Small Business Saturday: Challenges and how to face them

About Small Business Saturday:

Small Business Saturday was first observed in the United States on November 27,2010. Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to encourage brick and mortar businesses that are local. It is a marketing initiative created and promoted by the American Express to encourage holiday shopping on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Unique challenges:

Since 2020, the world has undergone a major change. Be it global businesses or individual employees or small businesses, there has been a huge transformation across sectors of the economy. Migration of people has been limited, transformation is work culture, change in consumer’s spending patterns have effected a remarkable impact on small and medium enterprises. Since early 2022, the world is witnessing another challenge in the form of a major war in Eastern Europe. Mankind is facing challenges which are unprecedented in modern history.

Due to the ongoing war, inflation has soared across the world. That is not so good for retail businesses. Consumer spending takes a hit. Kabbage Small Businesses Recovery report on U.S. small businesses shows that their revenue has doubled year over year between July 2021 and July 2022. Although revenue has doubled, profits have remained flat amidst rising prices.

According to the U.S. Bureau of statistics, about 20% of small businesses fail by the end of the first year and 50% disappear at the end of their fifth year.

On the occasion of Small Business Saturday, in this microblog, let us have a sneak peek into two major challenges small businesses across the world face.

Finding customers:

This is a challenge which is faced even by established large businesses. Even the most successful big companies have people working hard every single day to find potential new customers.

The challenge is more significant for small businesses as they don’t have the same spending capacity as big corporations. How can a small business find customers with almost non existent brand awareness?  Customer acquisition cost has increased almost 60% over the last six years.

Solution:

Figuring out who your ideal customer is, is the beginning of finding customers. Even though you are a small business owner, you should make sure you are targeting the right set of audience. Crafting a clear customer persona helps you sail through the challenge. Once you have a clear customer persona, you can easily decide the right marketing channel to reach your potential customers thereby saving big on Customer Acquisition Cost.

Hiring Talent:

It is easy to hire with a short term mindset but unfortunately this strategy doesn’t yield long term results. One of the major challenges faced by small businesses is acquiring talent. Finding skilled and efficient staff is a challenge which is exclusive to small businesses with the reasons ranging from lack of Talent Acquisition executives and lack of sufficient budget to compensate, to candidates unwillingness to work for a small organization.

Solution:

Don’t settle for good employees when you can hire great ones. It is essential for you to spend enough time in the process of scrutinizing the applications and hiring the right candidate.

If lack of sufficient budget is the primary reason, then small business owners can hire freelancers or party time contractual employees. If the business idea is great, then you might get lucky to find experts willing to work for you in return for a small stake in your business.

We wish your business the best this Small Business Saturday.