How to Grow Sales on National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day

There’s not many things that sum up the spirit of American small businesses than your local mom and pop shop. 

And it’s not just that these family-owned businesses have sentimental significance for their local communities. They’re, in a very real way, the backbone of the American economy. 

The vast majority of businesses in the US are small, local enterprises with them also directly employing nearly half of the total workforce. What’s more, for every $100 spent at a local business, $68 stays in the local economy on average compared to just $43 for large businesses. 

So it’s no wonder then that people want to come together celebrating National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. 

What is the holiday all about?

While most people don’t need an excuse to support their favorite small businesses, with nearly 9 in 10 shoppers willing to pay more at small businesses and nearly half regularly going out of their way to support local businesses, it’s an opportunity to help them stand out from the bigger players.

It’s also an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of locally owned businesses, not just from an economic standpoint but also in the myriad of other intangible ways they impact their local communities. 

And, of course, the ultimate goal is to get more people purchasing from these businesses. 

When is National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day in 2021?

National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day always falls on March 29, which in 2021 is a Monday. This makes it the perfect opportunity to combine the day with the weekend and hold a three-day long promotion.

Who can participate in the event and why should they?

Despite its name, you don’t have to be running a small business as a husband and wife partnership to get involved with National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. 

If you’re a small business owner running a local store, there’s no reason not to participate. 

Especially when, unlike other commerce holidays like Black Friday, people don’t expect you to hold a sale and sell items at lower margins. 

Instead, shoppers go into Mom and Pop Business Owners Day with the intention of supporting your store as opposed to looking for a bargain. 

How to grow sales on Mom and Pop Business Owners Day

Seeing as National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day isn’t so much about sales as it is about getting people to support local businesses in their communities, making the most of the event to grow sales is going to require a more unique strategy. 

Instead of just simply discounting products across your store by a fixed percentage, you will need to communicate the value and importance of supporting local businesses and encourage them to visit your store. 

You can do this in a number of ways, including:

Sending a Mom and Pop Business Owners Day email campaign

One of the most effective and easiest ways to get involved with Mom and Pop Business Owners Day is to email your customers and simply let them know about the day.

In the email you’ll want to share why supporting small businesses matters (keeping money in the local communities, supporting local jobs, etc.). 

You’ll also want to talk about supporting small businesses in general instead of just talking about your own business. At least to start with. 

This prevents your email from coming across as insincere or that you’re just trying to make a quick buck. That said, once you’ve mentioned the importance of small businesses in general, by all means talk about the impact your particular business has on the local community. 

Mentioning how you source materials from local suppliers, sponsor a local sporting club, or otherwise support the local community is a great way of encouraging customers to shop at your store. 

To help foster this sense of community further it’s also worth thanking your customers for their support and letting them know how much you appreciate that they shop with you.

The email example below does a great job of this.

If you’re looking for an email app for your Shopify, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, Neto, or WooCommerce store to send emails, check out SmartrMail. 

Post on social media

After sending an email, the next thing you should do is post about National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day on social media. 

This will engage your existing audience and by using hashtags, will spread your reach to others looking to support small businesses like yours. 

In terms of what to post, the content can be similar to your email campaign, just in a more condensed form. With social media, imagery also becomes more important as its images that attract people’s attention. 

You could also try publishing multiple posts with different content. One idea would be to introduce yourself or whoever the business owner is like Pirates Popcorn did on Instagram below.

Team up with other local businesses

As National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day is all about coming together to support our local businesses, one great way you can do this is by teaming up with other local businesses to support each other. 

You could do this by including offers from other retailers in your emails and social posts in exchange for them doing the same with your offers.

It doesn’t have to be a formal arrangement either. Simply retweeting and sharing their social media posts will show your support and likely get them doing the same for you. 

Not only does this signal to potential customers that you’re committed to helping their local community, but teaming up also expands your reach by leveraging other stores’ audiences for free. 

Support a local cause

As shoppers getting involved with Mom and Pop Business Owners Day tend to do so to support their local community rather than to pick up a bargain, if you want to attract people with a promotion, you might want to consider supporting a local cause. 

This could mean simply pledging a percentage of your proceeds on the day to a local charity or even a sports club. 

By advertising this initiative to your customers through email and social media posts, you’re giving potential shoppers two reasons to shop with you: Support a local business and a local cause at the same time. 

This better aligns with shoppers’ motivations and will help your business stand out among all the others who are simply encouraging people to shop locally.

Don’t forget traditional media

When putting together a marketing campaign for any event it can be easy to only focus on digital marketing but it’s important not to forget the importance of traditional media as well. 

Especially for events like Mom and Pop Business Owners Day where local businesses are celebrated which leads itself well to local media like newspapers. 

If your business has an interesting story, or even if you’ve just been serving your local community for a long time now, you might even be able to get a local newspaper to do a story on you in celebration of the day. 

Whether it’s free publicly or simply ad space you take out, by also incorporating channels like newspapers, radio, and even TV you’ll reach a wider audience than just relying on digital marketing alone.

The bottom line

National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day is a great opportunity for people to show their support for small and local businesses. More importantly, it’s also a chance for these businesses to boost sales. 

It’s also an incredibly easy event to get involved with. All that you really need to do is send a dedicated Mom and Pop Business Owners Day email and post about it on your social media. 

The main point to keep in mind is that shoppers who are going to participate in the event are doing so to support their favorite local businesses and not to grab a bargain. 

While this fundamental shift in shopper motivation is great for your bottom line, it also requires a shift in strategy compared to other shopping holidays.