3 Reasons Why I Hate Small Business Saturday

Four days ago was the annual occurrence of “Small Business Saturday.”

Just the very thought of it makes me cringe.

Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who knows even one iota about me knows that I LOVE small business owners, and am a firm believer that small business owners are the backbone of America.

I am extremely open and outspoken about the fact that Big Government LOVES Big Business, and both have been growing by record amounts recently, at the expense of the very backbone of America, and the key to turning this stagnant economy around – the small business owner.

So why do I absolutely HATE Small Business Saturday?

Here are just three reasons why…

1. Why is it only one day a year? Every day should be The Day to buy from small business owners instead of the big chain stores. Just the suggestion that Americans should only show a preference to small businesses on one day a year is insulting to me and other small business owners.
2. Whose brilliant idea was it to make Small Business Saturday the day AFTER Black Friday – after millions of Americans have spent all of their time, money and energy shopping like crazy at big chain retail stores?

   Oh, that’s right. Small Business Saturday was the invention of American Express – a Big Business that clearly favors other Big Businesses in its policies, including rewarding larger businesses with better rates and lower fees, and by making sure that Big Businesses get their lion’s share of American holiday shopping dollars on Black Friday before they throw a few crumbs to small business owners on Small Business Saturday.

   If a small business owner had invented Small Business Saturday, don’t you think he or she would have had it come BEFORE Americans empty their wallets and max out their credit cards on the biggest shopping day of the year?

   If that were the case, Big Business needn’t worry – there would still be PLENTY left for them, mainly because of reason number three.

3. This one is my biggest pet peeve of all: Small Business Saturday is all about asking people to shop at small businesses without giving any legitimate reason why (other than “it’s the right thing to do” or “to help support your community”). That’s pathetic, in my opinion, and is really just a form of unseemly begging.

Instead, small business owners should do on Small Business Saturday what they should (but don’t) do on all of the other 364 days a year: give shoppers a compelling, irresistible OFFER (that’s the “O” in my The WOW! Strategy™) to do business with them.

In other words, instead of just pleading with people to please do us small business owners a big charitable favor and spend some money with us that you don’t really want to, wouldn’t it make A LOT more sense for us to create compelling, irresistible OFFERS that shoppers couldn’t possibly refuse?

Or is such smart marketing something only Big Business chain stores should be smart enough to do?

I own several small businesses myself, and I help a group of private clients build others. All of those businesses have irresistible, Black Friday-like OFFERS that work to attract our ideal target WHO (that’s the first “W” in my The WOW! Strategy™) 365 days a year.

I know it’s strange, but I believe that’s A LOT better way to run a small business than just to wait for one day every year so we can beg consumers to spend some money with us, trying to plead for our very right to exist and tug on the heartstrings of consumers to please stoop low enough to do a little bit of shopping with us small business owners, who can’t seem to figure out how to create and market irresistible OFFERS like the big chain stores do.

How about you?

What do YOU think about Small Business Saturday?