I’ve been running a small handmade jewelry shop online for a couple of years, and every year I try to figure out whether participating in Small Business Saturday actually helps when you don’t have a physical store. Last year I posted some discounts and tried to hype it up on social, but the results were kind of mixed — a few extra sales, but nothing crazy. I keep seeing people say it’s more of an in-person thing, so now I’m wondering if online-only shops can really benefit from it or if I’m just wasting time and energy trying to jump on the trend.
From my experience, it can work for online shops, but only if you treat it like a mini-campaign instead of just posting a discount code and hoping for the best. I’ve got a digital art store, and what helped me was prepping a few days earlier — warming up my audience, teasing deals, and even showing some behind-the-scenes stuff. I came across a post on small business saturday that talked about how the whole point is building visibility and tapping into the big wave of people actively looking for small brands to support that weekend. I noticed much better results once I treated it like a real event instead of just another promo day.
I don’t sell anything myself, but I always end up browsing smaller shops around that time of year just out of curiosity. A lot of them seem to use the weekend to refresh their content or show off what makes their products unique, and that usually grabs my attention more than the discount. Sometimes I bookmark interesting stores and come back weeks later when I actually need something, so I guess the exposure itself has value even outside the shopping rush.
