Guest post by Jen Risley, AMIBA

Why promote Shop Indie Local early this holiday season? Because more of us are shopping early for holiday gifts.

From National Retail Federation:

Over the last decade, consumers have been kicking off their holiday shopping early in order to spread out their budgets and avoid the stress of holiday shopping. Continuing the trend [in 2022], 60% of holiday shoppers started browsing and buying by early November.

How to say it in your small business marketing

A good message to share with customers is something along the lines of “Let’s ensure that independent businesses have strong end-of-the-year sales by supporting them now.”

Here are some ways they can support not just your business, but all your local independent colleagues:

• Pre-order gifts and supplies today
• Buy a gift card
• Support local fundraising campaigns
• Donate to your community’s Independent Business Alliance
• Share on social media how much you love locally owned businesses (tag your post with #shopindielocal)
• Adapt and share these posts on social media

A huge thank you to the American Booksellers Association for creating the October is the New December campaign to boost the Shop Early, Shop Local message. Check out their campaign here.

Make your own social media graphics with the “Shop Early, Shop Indie Local” message, like this one from the American Booksellers Association:

Stacks the bookstore cat says shop early, shop local.

Subscribe to SmallBizSurvival for more Shop Indie Local updates throughout the holidays.

Kids in a canoe photo (CC) by CC Chapman

Our latest Survey of Rural Challenges said natural resources are rural communities’ best rural assets, but most places don’t have enough outfitters to take advantage of them as tourism development.

Here’s how rural people like you can take small steps to grow into outdoor outfitters. 

• Gather Your Crowd to attract groups and organizations that want to help
• Build Connections to borrow equipment and acquire insurance
• Take Small Steps by splitting the work with different businesses and organizations in the community.

Both Deb and I visited Eastern Kentucky last year. I visited Estill County, and Deb was in Jackson County. We each shared a version of this process to help get tourism ideas off the ground.

Ask around, others may help

Kathy from Jackson County wanted to start her own outdoor business but she only had one side by side ATV to use. Then another person offered a canoe for Kathy to rent out. This started a conversation around the room of how she could start now, using what others offer and they would help her too. 

Small steps to take now

In Estill County, we sketched out the steps to grow their own outfitters for river and forest recreation. Here are some of the key steps:

• Talk to an existing outfitter in a similar area from the surrounding communities. Ask lots of questions.
• Find local outdoor recreation groups. Their members might be good potential operators, partners or customers.
• Consider covering startup costs with Sponsor-A-Canoe with local business logos or wraps.
• Cover insurance costs by finding a sponsor or getting a discount through the chamber or organizations like the American Canoe Association.
• Break up all the parts of the business and find a person or group to manage or run each part. One group might own the canoes, another has a trailer and can handle payroll, another might volunteer for part of the work during startup.

It’s not as traditional as starting all at once with a business plan and lots of debt, but it’s more of the rural approach. We’re used to making do and making things work.

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Wash-o-mat sign from the small town of Clovis, New Mexico. CC by chames richalds

Lots of small towns have no self-service laundry facilities, so it’s a smart business to start. It also adds a valuable service and amenity to build your community.

Laundromats are notoriously expensive to get started, and rural businesses have to start with the minimum startup expenses.

The Idea Friendly Method was designed for these small towns and small business realities. An Idea Friendly approach to starting a self-service laundry place in a small town would be to:

Build connections to find what you need without spending any more than you have to at first.

Take small steps and experiment with extra services cheaply to find which ones people use.

Here’s what Building Connections could look like:

• Often, hotels and motels offer a laundry area, maybe just one washer and dryer pair. See if you can build on that.
• Or, ask churches if they have laundry capability and could open it further to the public even during limited hours.
• Deb Brown told me about a Chicago sports bar that offered laundry in the back room.

Ask around for other groups or people in town who might be good partners.

Here are some extra services to experiment with by Taking Small Steps:

• Reader Emily Karsjens Perry mentioned 24 hour vending machines and exercise equipment. (If your Idea Friendly mind went straight to asking around to find donated or thrifted exercise equipment, 5 bonus points!)
• Sheila Scarborough mentioned the combination businesses Frama Coffee at Tumbleweed Laundry formerly in Marfa, TX. (Idea Friendly version: single serve coffee machine?)
• Deb Brown said another laundromat in Thomasville, NC, was near a bingo parlor. Deb said you often saw folks waiting on laundry who would fill their time by crossing the parking lot to play bingo. (Idea Friendly question: could you try a pop-up laundry, maybe in an empty building near an attraction like bingo?)

What ideas would you throw in the wash?

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Having trouble getting customers in the door? Consider these tips. Photo by Becky McCray

If you have a retail store in a small town, you know how difficult it can be to attract customers in the door. With so much online competition and limited resources, it is hard to get people in the store and buying your products. In this article, we’ll share some of our best ways to get customers in the door of your retail store.

In our recent Survey of Rural Challenges, one store owner said, “Our challenge is getting customers in the door. They assume the selection and prices will be better at big box stores. If we can get people into the store they see that we have better quality at better prices, and we get the sale.”
Another said even bribery wasn’t working: “People who live in town have never walked through the door. Even when I sent them a $20 gift card to entice them.”

Check your store’s product selection. Is it what people really want these days? Photo by USDA

Do you have what they really want?

Make sure you have what your customers want. All the promotion in the world won’t drive customers to a business that doesn’t offer what people want.

The first retailer above said if customers do come in, “we get the sale.” That’s a good indication that you’re on target.

Limited business hours are the Number One complaint against small town businesses. Most of us don’t live on this schedule any more. Photo by Becky McCray.

Are you open when they’re shopping?

They can’t come in the door, if the door isn’t open.

Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor, made a house call with us some time ago to talk through small town retail challenges. Here’s his advice about hours:

“Studies have shown that, in order, these are the best money making times for retail:

1. Saturday 11 am – 1 pm
2. Saturday 3 pm – 5 pm
3. Sunday 3 pm – 5 pm
4. Sunday 11 am – 1 pm

“If your store is closed on Sundays, you may be missing out on two of the top four money-making times! You have to test these against your store to see if it proves true.”

I ran a retail store for almost 13 years in a small town. We were open 10am to 9pm, Monday through Saturday. Sales from 5-9pm were always more than sales from 10am to 5pm. Almost every single day for over 4000 days, evenings beat day time for us.

If you’re willing to do some simple research, you can find out the best hours for a store in your town.

You have a lot of marketing tools at hand today. Use them to remind people over and over that your store is here and what you offer.

Invite them in again and again, at least 13 times

Our contributor Glenn Muske said, “Research has found that potential customers need to hear or see the name of a new business three to five times before they even recognize that the business exists. Thus, a one-time big advertisement will do little to bring in customers. Continuity in the early days is crucial.

“Knowing about the business is only part of step one, however. You now have to get customers in the door. Research suggests that potential customers may need another five to seven contacts with your product or service to recognize its benefits to them. Remember, the customer wants to solve a problem.”

Contacts with your customers can be all the times they see your ads, social media posts, flyers, online listings, signs or sponsorship of local causes. You don’t get to count the ones they don’t see.

You have to put your business out there a lot more than you think in order to get just one customer in the door.

Musicians on the sidewalk? Tool days in the parking lot? Dinner in the greenhouse? There’s no end to the experiences you can create in or outside your store that help you bring people in the doors. Photo by Becky McCray.

Create experiences with events

To survive in independent local retail today, you must provide an experience that can’t be duplicated by chain stores or online or in the big city. Events are one of the best ways to create a meaningful experience that is tough for any big store to duplicate.

Hold an event that is a real experience

The owner of a retail hardware store and greenhouse in rural Kansas started brainstorming ideas for events he could hold to create an experience for customers.

• Tool Days. Bring in the guy who does blade sharpening for the afternoon. Set up tents in the parking lot and have people teach how you use tools of all kinds. Do demonstrations and hands-on (appropriate) play with tools.
• Dinner in the Greenhouse. His well-stocked greenhouse is a wonderfully green and lush space in dry Western Kansas. There’s room for a couple of tables, and there’s a bubbling fountain. It’s great! Let’s have dinner there! Get a local eatery or aspiring chef to cater. Have fun with it. Use a jungle theme. Get creative. Since there are only a couple of tables available, turn it into a super-exclusive special thing that not everyone can do. Sell out early.

Do a bunch of mini-events

I’ve shared these ideas for mini-events for rural retail businesses before:

• Recruit anyone who gives lessons to hold a student performance (could be music, dance, martial arts, drama, writing, language, anything!) Students bring families, instant crowd
• Bring games, tables and chairs and hold a game night (board games, card games, dominoes, adult coloring books, you name it)
• Bring beach chairs and umbrellas and pretend you have a downtown beach (play beachy summer music for bonus points)
• Hold a tasting or sampling from any local winery, food business, or even cooking classes
• Read poetry or start community conversations on any topic you like (poetry slam?)

A local furniture store hosts two temporary businesses for a special shopping event, combining business-in-a-business and pop-ups to benefit everyone. Photo by Becky McCray.

Host a pop-up business inside your business

Invite another business to set up in a corner of your shop, as a pop up. This could be an artist, artisan, maker, crafter or tinkerer.
Look for those that are doing business from their homes. Maybe they are just beginning to think about making some money with their products or are just starting to get an online following.

Once they setup, make more of it:

• Hold a meet the artist event
• Have a party announcing your new acquisition
• Create a Facebook event and do something special to announce their arrival

Joann Schissel shared her pop-up event success story with me:

“My partner and I have a winery business (Nearwood Winery). He makes the wine, and I’m in charge of customer experience. We have a small tasting room on the square in Knoxville. We’ve found that pop-up shops or a one-time event seems to bring in customers. Our next community event is “Living Windows” which kicks off the holiday shopping season. We invited a crafter to set up her “shop” inside our wine tasting room for that evening. She sells hand made gift bags that hold a bottle of wine. Other pop ups we’ve had is book signings by local authors and art exhibits by local artists. All these type of promos seem to bring in customers. We try to focus on products/services that enhance the wine experience. Our motto is “where creatives gather.”

Three local stores cooperated on this joint ad, marketing their stores together. Photo by Becky McCray.

Cooperate with other businesses

Leverage your relationships with other businesses to put together a tour of businesses, or an experience that includes more than just your business.

Joann did this, too! She created a local fashion show:

“I reached out to our business owners that had fashions or a tangent business. I know a jewelry designer that will match her product with the clothes from the boutiques. A local photographer will take photos of the models and the event. A fabric designer that makes her own jackets will model her creations.

“I charged $5 advance tickets (available online or at the shops) and $10 at the door. The first beverage is free, so there is very little ‘risk’ to the guests, but allows me to gauge interest and attendance. We had 15 models (includes kids) and friends/relatives were in the audience. I am focused on ‘gathering my crowd’ strategy and catering to established groups of people that have their own crowd. I loved working with the women business owners and promoting their products.”

The retail store owner’s dream: so many customers, they can’t all get in the doors at once! Photo by Becky McCray

Keep trying and keep trying

After more than a dozen years of small town retail experience, I understand how it feels to stand in an empty store and wonder where all the customers went. But today, we have so many tools to market our businesses, serve customers in new ways, and create experiences they can’t get anywhere else. Our best bet for survival is to keep trying new experiments and keep the ones that work best. Then try more new experiments.

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Cited by:

Get Customers in the door, Atchison County Development Corporation Newsletter, (Missouri) Spring 2023

While they were pointing out HipCamp to us, our friends at Marketing Delmarva also brought up the enduring power of Google Local reviews and photos. (I added the bold for emphasis.)

If you love a local place, put it on Google. Following our first pick-your-own experience at said blueberry world, while sitting in the car in a berry-fueled coma, I edited some photos and posted a raving review and images on Google. I’m still (two years later), getting updates that those pics set records for how much they were viewed. Not sure if or how that translated to their sales but it’s a great way to boost visibility for any place/area/attraction one visits.

If you love a local place, put pics on Google Maps.

I completely agree! I also have photos up there that have been viewed over 10,000 times. Combined, my meager 35 photos have over 350,000 views. I love to post photos of small town businesses and leave reviews especially for people who go above and beyond. This has reminded me to get back to leaving reviews, now that I’m out and about more.

Yes, post retail and food businesses, and also service businesses, public places, museums, parks and more. If the place is on the Map, you can probably add a photo and usually review it, too. I just posted a photo of my local Farmer’s Cooperative grain scales!

Eatery pro tip: Post photos of menus.

Yes, yes, menus change. But as a potential customer, it helps to have a starting point!

How to add photos to Google Maps

A word of caution, Google is always changing things so you may need to search support.google.com for the current instructions.

Add photos while you’re still at the business, for maximum impact:

1. Open Google Maps on your phone
2. Find the business on Maps
3. Look for the + or “contribute” button to add a review and photo.

Find your photos already on Google Maps

Wondering if your own photos have been viewed a lot? You can check.

To find your existing photos, you need to start on your computer.

1. Open Google Maps on your computer (not your phone)
2. At the top left, click the menu button. The icon is three horizontal lines, or sometimes called a hamburger menu button. It’s next to or part of the search box.
3. Click “Your contributions” to see a map of all your places.

You can even contribute a photo to a local business from the “your contributions” menu. It’s a great way to play catch up and post a bunch of photos at once.

Action steps for rural Chambers of Commerce

You’re sitting on a goldmine of local photos. If you haven’t put a batch up on Maps lately, schedule time to do that.

Not just your businesses, but also your parks, public art and museums. 

Remind locals to review places, even places they go all the time. They know more than someone who only visits once. Encourage your positive folks to leave good reviews, since the negative folks are quick to post something snarky.

I once got a negative review for my liquor store that said, “It sales spirits and that is bad.” (Probably not an actual customer.) I wrote a reply about how we supported local efforts to prevent underage drinking. I like to think that a calm reasonable reply helped our reputation. Luckily, my friendly customers rallied with more positive helpful comments. (Thanks, y’all!)

Help businesses get more reviews with approved campaigns. 

Now, Google is touchy about what’s allowed in promoting reviews. But generally, these are good bets:

1. Get more businesses verified. They can do this with a simple phone call or by paper mail.
2. Post signs to remind customers to leave reviews, or create cards to drop in bags or hand to customers.
3. Use a QR code to the location on Maps. Follow Google’s instructions to create a quick link to leave a review.
4. Encourage business people to review each other, when appropriate. They know the value of reviews!

Pro tip for businesses: Check Google’s Marketing Kit for signs and ways to easily print out your best reviews. 

Let me repeat, Google is always changing things, so all these links may be dead by now. You may need to search support.google.com (or where ever they offer support now!) for the current instructions.

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Oneota Co-op Grocery. Decorah, Iowa. Photo CC by Jason Riedy

Rural cooperatives go way back

Rural areas have a long history with cooperatives through cooperative telephone service, electricity, and agriculture.

My husband is a member of the Alva Farmers Cooperative for farm supplies, and we’re members of Pioneer Telephone Cooperative for our cell phones and internet.

You might be a co-op member, too. Even so, you might not know much about how cooperatives work. Or how you could use one to make your town a better place to live. Or how they’re different from “community ownership.” You’ve probably seen the annual cooperative meeting notices and maybe even voted on board members or managers of a local cooperative. And while your cooperative patronage dividend check may not be enough to retire to the tropics, it does represent local money that stayed local.

What cooperatives are

When the people who buy the products or services also own and operate the business, that’s a cooperative. Or at least a start of one.

There are seven cooperative principles, adopted internationally in 1995, based on principles set out in 1844. (Yes, 1844.) Anyone can join, everyone has an equal say, everyone shares in the economic benefits, members get training to run the co-op, control stays local, co-operatives co-operate with each other, and the community benefits.

That certainly sounds more fair to your community than remote corporate ownership that has never seen your town, never heard of you, doesn’t care about your environment and isn’t particularly interested in much beyond profit.

When to consider a cooperative

When the owner retires.

When an owner retires instead of closing or selling the business, consider converting that business to a cooperative, especially a worker owned cooperative. You’ll cut down the possibility of an outside buyer later moving the company out of town.

When margins are thin.

Lots of small towns rely on community owned businesses to manage grocery stores, movie theaters, and other businesses important to the community that have thin margins. A cooperative makes a lot of sense to keep these businesses open.

When you want to share the benefits broadly.

Rather than benefiting just one founder, a small family group or a few wealthy investors, a cooperative distributes any gains to all the members.

Even a community-owned corporation means the one who owns the most shares has the most votes. A cooperative is one way to include everyone in both ownership and management.

When the community is at stake.

Essential services like utilities or health care may be too important to your community to hand over entirely to investor ownership. Or a key local business may matter too much to see it transferred or closed. In those cases, you can look at cooperative ownership as an alternative.

Cooperatives are still people

Since cooperatives are made up of people, there will be people problems. People will disagree, mistakes will happen, and personality conflicts will make life difficult.

“A co-operative is not a panacea,” Zita Cobb said. “It’s an organized way to fight with each other.”

Zita was speaking at the Georgetown Conference on Prince Edward Island, Canada. They used a co-operative to revive essential services for local fishers who faced enormous economic and environmental challenges.

Fighting with each other in an organized way is probably better than being at the mercy of corporations who put profit ahead of your local well-being. And it’s certainly better than corporations packing up profits every night and shipping them out of your community.

Learn more about cooperatives

The USA National Cooperative Business Association has a wonderful “What is a Co-op?” article with helpful infographics you can share in your community.

Co-operatives First helps people in Western Canada form cooperatives. Check out their blog full of articles on starting coops and revitalizing small towns. They are a good resource no matter where you live.

Australians can check out the Co-op Federation for helpful resources.

There’s also an International Cooperative Alliance.

Look for more local groups that are focused on your geography or the specific type of co-operatives you’re considering. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund is a cooperative association of Black farmers, landowners, and cooperatives in the southern United States.

Want to convert a small business to employee ownership? Becoming Employee Owned can help.

The USDA offers special services and support to cooperatives.

Is it co-op, cooperative or co-operative?

I was wondering, so I checked.

Internationally, it’s usually co-operative.

In the US, it’s usually cooperative.

Anywhere it’s shortened, it’s also usually hyphenated as co-op.

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You might have seen the memes and jokes.

Someday all us old people will use cursive as secret code.

But you might not have thought about how this applies to your small business signs.

And we’ve all seen signs we couldn’t read because they used dense Old English script lettering.

Absolutely have to have script or cursive for your brand? Make sure any words in script are optional.

In the picture of the Alva’s Market sign, it would probably be ok to make the word “Alva” cursive since that’s the name of the town you’re standing in when you look at it. You don’t have to understand the word Alva to understand the business. The word “Market” is essential to understanding that you can buy food here. For all future signs, best to put that in plain block letters.

If you have existing signs with cursive lettering, start saving now for replacements.

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Shawn popped up a business test in his own yard! Photo by Deb Brown

Your fellow reader Ava asked a great question:

If I am already working, in school, and wanting to start up just a real small small business, then how would that work differently from someone who is coming from a completely different stand point, like not working or in school and is just generally starting up their business with saved money? Thank you!

The secret to starting a real side hustle, side gig or just a real small small business is to take small steps.

Try small scale steps that get your idea in front of people who can pay for it. That’s how you’ll build knowledge of what works, build an initial following in the market, and build assets toward your next, bigger step.

What can you do to test a business idea?

You don’t need much to start small. Even one square foot of space may be enough. Photo by Becky McCray.

• Try something temporary: pop-up for a day, a week or a season.
• Try something tiny: look for just a few hundred square feet to set up in.
• Try something together: set up your business inside an existing business, coworking space, maker space, shared art studio, or shared commercial kitchen.
• Try a truck or trailer: use more than one town to gather enough customers.

For example, a high school student in Alva, Oklahoma, popped up a business test by borrowing just one square foot of counter space in a beauty salon. She sold hand braided headbands made from fabrics scraps.

Our Deb Brown wrote more about testing your way into business here: Business plans are not worth the paper they’re written on

Surprise twist: this is how I’d advise someone not working or in school, someone who was generally starting up their business with saved money, too.

You can ask your rural small business question here.

One pop-up is just a pop-up, but a group of pop-ups is a market. Photos by Forest County Business Alliance, Austin Moore, CC by Jeffrey Grandy.

When you’re planning to add pop-up businesses or shed businesses to your small or rural community, concentrate them in one area.

Better to have four sheds or pop up businesses together on a single lot, than fourteen vendors spread out all over.

Your goal is to make it feel like a concentrated burst of new activity. If your pop ups are too spread out, people will never notice them. Remember that nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, and put your vendors close together.

Tionesta Pennsylvania clustered 10 sheds into one market village along contiguous empty lots.

Wolfforth Texas clustered a set of sheds to use as a farmers market.

Hyannis Massachusetts spread their sheds within the port area which is popular with tourists. Their artist shanties don’t stand shoulder to shoulder, but they are all within a very small area.

Get more ideas to turn your empty lots into bustling commercial spaces with SaveYour.Town’s video Empty Lot Economic Development.

This fuzzy boy is always getting matted fur. If only there was a cat grooming service he could go to!

This was a new idea to me. Alyssa McCleery from Newkirk, Oklahoma, brought this up. She has local dog grooming but had to drive hours to find a place to get her cat groomed.

I was skeptical at first, but why not cat grooming as a service?

Just trimming cat claws can be a challenge. Not to mention those longhair cats who get matted and tangled fur.

The Groomer to Groomer website has plenty of articles on grooming cats as a business.

Seems like a perfect mobile business for rural areas. Show up in a van or trailer, do grooming on site and cover as much territory as you choose.

There is an economic development benefit. When someone has to drive out of town, maybe hours away, to get their pet groomed, they are going to be shopping  and spending money while they wait. Better to have that service provided in town, maybe even in home, and avoid the extra out-of-town spending.

Want more small businesses in your town?

Watch our Cheap Rural Economic Development ideas video.