live from your book public media studios wdia presents Keystone addition business a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in north eastern and Central Pennsylvania This is Keystone addition business and now moderator chris Jones hello i'm chris Jones according to business formation numbers business startups we're at a record high during the pandemic now The challenge is keeping that will meet him going Especially during the current supply chain disruption as we enter the holiday season those small businesses are looking to draw in and keep customers while getting the most bang for their buck We have experts ready to answer your questions about small business success during the holidays Call us at one hundred three to six nine eight four too Email us at Keystone at wba dawg tagus on social with the hashtag Keystone business with your thoughts But first wba is Paul is our examines the challenges small businesses face many retailers aren't waiting for black friday to start the holiday sales push in are already advertising big deals small businesses often rely on the holiday shopping season to help fill in any shortfall some earlier in the year and provide a little financial cushion for the months to come Many of them are still the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic including staffing shortages and short term supply deficits from the supply chain disruption So what can small business owners due to keep up with the big box stores and online retailers Some experts suggest leveraging social media an email to promote sales and services investing in contactless payment tools e-commerce can also help for Keystone Edition business I'm Paul bazaar Now let's meet our panel of experts here to answer your questions on how to help small businesses during the holiday shopping season dorothy lane is the director of the wilkes university small business development center where she leads a team that helped start grow and manage businesses and five counties spencer chessmen is the founder and former ceo of I gore medcom and is currently the founder and ceo of new food solutions liz baldy is the project project coordinator for scranton tomorrow A nonprofit community and economic development organization that creates and promotes opportunities for business development in scranton and is joining us we assume thank you for joining us today And let's begin our discussion dorothy we're going to start with you tell us a little bit more about the small development small business development center at wilkes university and give us a few tips for small businesses they have as they approach the holidays Sure so the small business development center is located on the campus of wilkes university and as was noted in the introduction we cover a five county territory we cover carbon county columbia county luzerne skill and solomon county so we have a pretty wide reach and we're one of sixteen centers within the state of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania We're all funded by the small business administration and pennsylvania's department of community and economic development as well as our host institutions and we provide no cost confidential consulting to small businesses throughout the commonwealth and our territory We have been working like crazy the past two years or so with all of our clients helping them pivot through coded and then more recently getting them prepared for the holiday season season lots of tips that we have it's not a one size fits all fits all but one of the biggest things that we say sets a lot of the small businesses apart from the big box stores and the other competitors is really just having outstanding customer service is key And then also having an online presence businesses really if they haven't gotten on board with something online then they're going to be losing out but there are two of the big ones that we suggest to all of our clients that come in Perfect And we're gonna We're going to dive deeper into those topics that I know a longer list that you've that you have prepared spencer we're gonna come to you next But late late last week we had the opportunity to interview keith your gonski who's a business consultant with the university of scranton's small business development center and here's what he had to say so some of the biggest struggles that small businesses face during the holidays based on what we saw last year is going to be the supply chain issues once again many businesses last year had a hard time getting their products in the hands of their customers this year with products not been delivered transportation problem shortage of drivers those problems are going to actually escalate holiday shopping a super important small businesses in the fact that in many cases it's almost a third of their sales It's important for a small business it to survive that they need to make sure that they're focused on promotion extending their hours and they need to add online options for people to buy and also multiple payment options make it easy on the customer so spencer let's double click on this challenge that a lot of small businesses are going to face around supply chain You were the ceo of iger macomb a multi-million dollar e-commerce shop for over two decades and you know being familiar with that business I know you had to navigate supply chain all the time importing products from overseas so can you share some insights that might be beneficial to small businesses as they're trying to navigate navigate this going into the holiday season What's that going into the holiday season It's probably a little late for importing other than if you had to emergency fly something in because I gourmet in the food importing most of that was done by ocean transport and that's especially these days Months between sitting at the port and being on the water so if you're my suggestion is find something that's close to home at this point in time and have backup suppliers in place because your regular suppliers are likely going to be running out of things cardboard boxes shopping bags wrapping paper any paper printing supplies toner for your printers any kind of things that you are going to need if your business doubles or triples this time of here think ahead find alternate suppliers for it and you don't get Do your best not to get caught up in this supply chain mess that we're all living with right now if there are pending orders Do you order more Do you play it conservative How would you approach it Yeah I guess that's your management style if you're a gunslinger then go for it and keep the pipe open if if you're a little timid than just play a conservative And what about you know maybe focusing on all alternative types of products and really opening up your inventory if it seems like certain products might be kind of caught up in in the port Yeah I mean mean the challenge there is sometimes companies will order items that are specifically seasonal hanukkah items christmas items things that are tough to sell if you miss the opportunity So I would say even you know try not to pick your whole pigeon hole yourself into items like that And remember right after this holiday season you'll have the super bowl opportunity You'll have st patrick's day valentine's day so there's other smaller holiday opportunities where if you buy the right way you'll have additional opportunities to move product awesome and i'm hoping that we could Chad a little bit more as a group later about how businesses could start to anticipate a strategy post holiday season liz Welcome to the show Tell us more about scranton tomorrow and maybe some of the tips that you know that you're offering small businesses to prepare So it's great to tomorrow is at five twenty three nonprofit we were charged with being a leading economic development agency for the city of scranton Like I said it around burma's 30 years Ah organizational structure is broken down into various committees that are populated by business owners entrepreneurs City officials community leaders artist it's a really great group of people that come together to make all of our programming possible the committee's investigation involve state clean green and design We have our Of course are small business development and marketing committee and our economic revitalization committee that focuses on the economic driver events for so some of the tips I'd say that we're offering for holiday is first and foremost our is going to tomorrow's light up downtown holiday campaign it really focuses and highlights on making your business as visible and accessible as possible visible in terms of just getting involved in programs such as ours I mean we do press releases we do email blasted database that has thousands of subscribers social media posts just making sure that your name is getting out there and in terms of accessibility I know that the past year and a half Businesses have had to pivot their business models almost on a daily basis to make themselves accessible to their customer base and those types of adaptations included curbside pickup transitioning into take out and delivery food service and I think dorothy touched upon this and the importance of housing e-commerce capability having your inventory or online ordering for restaurants mine is crucial at this point It's something that allows you to get in front of a much larger audience for a longer period of time than gesture your business hours because we do know that small business is often have limited hours compared to other big box stores having your inventory and your products available to view online and then order online and pickup in store it takes shipping and the delayed shipping for holiday completely out of the equation and makes it a much more beneficial environment for both you and your customer Perfect Thank you so much We're gonna come back in studio here and dorothy oh i've been the only open I referenced this idea that you know you have a list You know you call it kind of your survival guide that you offer small businesses that come to the spdc let's talk about digital marketing right and liz just mentioned the importance of having a digital presence You know an online presence Can you speak to that and some of the advice you might be giving two businesses coming into spdc Sure Especially during the pandemic I think everybody realize the importance of having an online presence and I think that became almost a make or break for a lot of businesses during the pandemic it really highlighted the need to have that presence online So whether you have you know a really robust web site that you can you know direct A lot of your clients two and you know they can purchase right through that web site and have it delivered to your home That's great but even if all you do is put together some sort of a social where people can easily find you through you know a facebook search or something like that We've had a number of small businesses be very very successful in and doing the facebook live events where they sell some of their goods online through that type of thing as easy as you know giving each item a number and having someone say sold in the comments and then you know having them calling with a credit card number or pay through pay pow something like that So just having a little little bit of an online presence can really boost your sales during not only the holidays but any time It's just another revenue stream perfect spencer let's peel back the onion a little bit on that You know know that that digital marketing was a big part of I gourmets business so can you share se specific tips to a small business owner who still has time to implement some of these strategies well don't do it yourself type strategies that any small business owner can tackle on his own her own posting to social media those types of posts Listen you're probably not going to get the post that's gonna go viral and hit millions of people but you will get very targeted targeted if your message resonates with somebody and then you know it's that old they tell two friends and they tell two friends that's kind of how social media works just in sort of a modern era so definitely be active on your channels the positive be festive and try to come up with some relevant content because you know content is really what what works on social media Other than that I would actually at the expense of my marketing bodies out there in the world would more stay away from paid buying paid terms because they get very expensive this time of year Be very careful with your budget says you set them on those types of a quick paperclip advertisements but you can get very focused like five or six words together will bring the costs down You know I don't know if you're like a hair salon you know don't buy scranton hair salon but by you know the best scranton hair salon or you know probably bad example but something along those lines try to get a little more dialed in with what you're purchasing there Perfect What about email he knows a little tricky I mean you have your own list So as long as you maintain a regular cadence with your list because you don't want people dropping off your list unsubscribing because you're hitting them too much You can email You know once or twice a week with again holiday relevant messages This is this on sale limited time opportunities any sort of call to action like that would really work best for an email and then certainly whether it's a softer an overt call to ask a person to a reference for for the viewers reach out to your local chamber if you're in the lackawanna county area reach out to scranton tomorrow they may have an email list that they'll be sending for businesses Same goes with the sba spdc but leverage those local sort of nonprofit resources that are there at this time to help you I'm liz we're gonna come back to youAnd you got me thinking curbside pickup right Is that I would assume the answer is yes but is that's still a thing Right And is it too late for businesses to implement it It definitely do not think it's too late In conversations we add with our downtown business owners are both retail in restaurants and eateries it's still not needed but for different reasons So it may not be in terms of using it to feel safe as vaccination rates go up and peoplere still masking but it's more of a convenience I don't see that changing moving forward all of our retailers are still offering it as an option because their customers have shown interest and have requested it if it's a possibility for you I would absolutely encourage you to continue to operate offer curbside pickup Again it's just another way to make yourself accessible and give people a reason to too big Make it a point to stop your store it could be something that they think again bought on social media and they hit named commented and pete over the phone but they don't have time to come in It and doing a quick phone call to the front desk in the running out We are going to be promoting a list of the downtown businesses that are ing to continue to do curbs curbside it is our drive through downtown holiday program that again will lift all of the restaurants and eateries that are doing curbside pick up take out and delivery as well just all the options It's it's an easy way to shop your way Eat your way in Dan your way through the holiday and you heard dorothy spencer offer some tips for digital marketing Do you have one or two that maybe you didn't hear them say that you want to share with our audience So again I recommend using social media as much as you can As it is the most probably inexpensive way rather than delving into trying to get somebody to redesign your web site if you don't already have e-commerce on your web site but there is always opportunities to further educate yourself and how to brand yourself and get the word out there Yet email be a social media there's constantly programs available to educate how to do that Themselves or there's opportunity to partner with local colleges and universities in northeast Pennsylvania We have wonderful universities and colleges that have computer technology majors and web design majors that they need internships that they get college credit for that we often partner what these colleges and get in turns into our small businesses that they help them do their social media campaigns younger fresher minds then then we know that have that fresh I and fresh idea how to make your social media page sparkle how to get the likes how to get the clicks so that there's ways to do it anyway inexpensively but again it's it's time to really make this a priority is to get your name out there and they're there are ways to do it inexpensively thank you so much Dorothy I'm going to come back to your survival guide and one of the things that I read about was you know you really insist on the importance of customer service during this holiday blitz and then also as part of the process when the holiday still going on but people are returning so can you speak to your opinion on the importance of customer service Sure I think you know when I started with the spdc gosh about 20 years ago or so I was in charge of a lot of the educational program and one of the first programs that we put on was how to survive and thrive alongside the big box stores and we brought in a specialist from I believe it was the university of illinois an expert in that area which was just kind of up and coming and the biggest thing that he really had to say is the biggest differentiator is the customer service and that's what we can really set a small business apart from some of the big box stores so being able to work with someone who comes into your store helping them find the appropriate gift you know bending over backwards to make it a great experience even when it comes to after the holidays and their returning merchandise to the store make that into kind of a sellable moment if they're going to return the merchandise engage them see what else in the store they might be interested in And if they're not that's ok you know hopefully they've had a great experience with you just by interacting with you in the store and hopefully they'll come back again to spend that credit or whatever they might have you know in your in your store so customer service is key I agree with you Spencer so should local businesses be thinking about getting their products on marketplaces like amazon com and wal-mart com Is that something I mean I imagine they have enough time to do that now if they didn't You know in a minute or so What was your experience in working with marketplaces like that I think marketplaces are great place to put your products if they're your products It's a tougher Go If you're an intermediary trying to wed yourself in between amazon or wal-mart and the producer because they're just not enough margin to go around to be that person unless maybe you're an exclusive rap or an importer or something along those lines but I think it might be a little tough to really get a robust strategy going at this late hour but again there's twelve months of selling after christmas too so now almost If you find the downtime to focus on something like that at least get started on it yes i'm going to ask liz in a second A little bit more about how scranton tomorrow's helping their businesses prepare for small business saturday and you know black friday cyber monday but I have a question for you before we get there which is Can you share how you think about discounting is now the time to be doing deep discounts and how would you approach it with only you know what is there Less than was about six weeks or so from from christmas So we're really these next four weeks are everything tricky question to be general about it you know obviously we're dealing with Again going back to an earlier topics supply chain issues right So a lot of cases your supply is going to be very limited and you've got to do I want to sell out at a discount or try to make my full margin because i've got this limited quantity but they're probably are some situations where you know now it's december 9th december 11th and your panicking a little bit because you don't want to hold this inventory over past the holidays so have a discounting strategy in your back pocket I think but it may not be necessary to pull it out this early ok so so have it ready Yeah Use it sparingly or or if you're trying to move product that maybe you'd have access amounts of yeah Combine that with whatever voice you have out there again the social media email just putting something on sale and then having someone come by Who's gonna buy it anyway that's not really helping you see gotta advertiser discounts ok great Liz we actually had a question came in from online to ask you We know what is scranton tomorrow doing to prepare the businesses for small business saturday so this will be scratching tomorrow's eleven year doing small business saturday for the downtown and every year we register with american express for their small business saturday program as a neighborhood champion for downtown intern we received some promotional items and we put together care packages and bags for the business owners to give out to their customer ahead small business saturday as a thank you for coming in and being up patron of their business so we have signage and balloons and flyers We will be doing a full social media campaign in the days leading up to two small business saturday we did just have an announcement that we had the mayor of scranton design a proclamation proclaiming that november twenty seventh is small business saturday and we invited are small business owners had come in for the photo and another way to get their name in the paper but we're really encouraging them to be creative this year In terms of what they'll be offering I know that black friday the day before so they tried to do something a little different different for each of those days small business saturday is really a way of celebrating our small businesses so they want to invite customers in make it a good time to shop I know that a lot of our businesses offer like hot chocolate stations and they do little giveaways for Doorbell busters or the morning they have specials on an hourly basis that are changing throughout the day in a way to make it good an exciting shopping experience for their customers so I guess leading up to it Just make sure that you're you're following our social media pages at her putting out information on what our businesses are offering but again it is the spirit of celebrating small businesses and supporting them and I know now more than ever Community is standing behind small businesses and this year is going to be great success and I think that the more we get the word out the more we talk about celebrating small business saturday The more it will benefit everybody and keep those awesome for a final question we're going to come back here to the studio to you dorothy And you know one of the things I know you spend time on when we're having this conversation conversation is how do you effectively retain the sales momentum that we get during the holidays and I know you have some tips that you could share with with our viewers we have about about a minute left Ok we do and it's probably something the small business owners don't want to hear because they're driving themselves like crazy during the holiday season but we encourage them not to take a break After the holiday russia's over We ask that you know you know keep the doors open keep on advertising You know whether it be print or social media stay customer focused There are going to be a lot of people who may be didn't get what they wanted for questioning christmas and you know they're going to be out shopping or they've gotten gift cards and you know they're eager to spend that those dollars so my advice would be to keep keep this door open Keep the pressure on to drive sales into into your business think about different events that you might be able to hold something that would be fun and would bring people into your store so that they could buy hold a contest of some sort Maybe everyone who enters a contest would get a small discount on an item and then the winner winds You know whatever that item is that you're trying to promote it's a great time to also launch a new product if you have something that you want to introduce for the spring months Something like that and then probably the most important tip that you want to think about after the holidays is put a plan in place for next year You know it's never and that's our monitor at the spdc playing can thank you so much I would like to thank our panelists for participating and thank you for joining us For more information on this topic some tips on how to small businesses can succeed during the holidays and beyond Please visit wba dawg Ford slash Keystone business and remember you can read watch this episode on demand anytime online or on the wpa app for Keystone Edition I'm chris Jones thank you for watching