HispanicBusiness

Manta understands that many small businesses rely on the holiday shopping rush to close their year out on a high note. Here are a few business tips that small business owners can quickly put in place to help increase their holiday success this year:

1. Know Who You Want to Sell To: Effective sales begin with understanding who your most important customer group is. This year more than half (53 percent) of small business owners look at members of Generation X as their most desired customers, with one-third (33 percent) believing that Baby Boomers will be their biggest spenders. From merchandise to promotions, think about what will appeal to your key target audience.

2. Get Creative, but Keep Your Stress Level In-Check: The holidays are demanding enough as it is, and coming up with a new pie-in-the-sky mobile app or daily-deal promotion at the last minute might suck up hours of your time that could be better spent with your customers. Use your creative juices to build a cool and appealing window display, and put your smartphone to use by taking pictures of new merchandise to post online.

3. Stick with What Works: If you know that participating in your community's local Holiday Shopping Stroll, or that your "12 days of Christmas" promotion across your social sites are what will bring in great sales for you, make sure you are ready to roll with those programs again this year.

4. Network to Support Your Fellow Business Owners and Yourself at the Same Time: Pull together a group of three or four other stores in your community to run some cross-store coupon or discount campaigns. Work out a system so each shop is handing out a coupon for another shop in your group each week, and then switch it up. This type of "progressive" couponing is a great way to drive new customers into your store.

Starting November 5, Manta will announce the start of the "Thank You America" campaign. The campaign will feature small businesses thanking their customers for continuing to shop local and supporting them and their communities. For more information, visit www.manta.com.

Manta is also a supporter of American Express Small Business Saturday®, a day dedicated to supporting and promoting small businesses on the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

About the Survey
Manta conducted this study from October 18, 2012 to October 22, 2012 via an online Silverpop survey of 1,087 small business owners, who are members of Manta.com and have claimed their Manta business profile. The margin of error is 3.45 percentage points. For the full report or additional information about the findings, please contact manta (at) bordersgratehouse (dot) com. To access the full survey results, go to http://www.manta.com/media/holiday_survey_10302012.

About Manta
Manta helps small businesses profit, connect and grow through the largest online community dedicated entirely to small business. Millions of people come to Manta each day to buy from, partner with and connect to companies. By joining Manta, small businesses easily harness the power of the Internet. Get visible; grow your business for free at www.manta.com.



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