Double the Celebration, Double the Growth: Leveraging Business Birthdays to Enhance Your Business and Customer Engagement

Ever wondered how a birthday celebration could be a catalyst for your business growth? Well, you're about to discover how!

Today's episode is a double celebration - we're honoring both our business's anniversary and my own birthday! In this episode, we will dive into how these special occasions could be pivotal in demonstrating appreciation, fostering customer loyalty, and creating excitement around your brand. Tag along as we dive into strategies like customer appreciation events, time-limited discounts, special offers, thrilling giveaways, and more!

Whether you're an experienced e-commerce pro or a newbie, we promise you'll find this episode both enjoyable and insightful. So join our birthday bash and find out how to make your customers a part of your celebration!

This week’s episode is sponsored by our Search Engine Optimization Mini Course.  Our Free online digital course that teaches eCommerce and website owners how to level up their search engine rankings with some simple, doable steps!  Join us at www.ecommercemadeeasypodcast.com/seominicourse/

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:34

This week, we're celebrating not only our business's birthday, but also, on the release of this podcast episode, it'll actually be my birthday. So how can we use business birthdays, and potentially even founders' birthdays, to our advantage? As an online business owner, what interesting ways can we help our customers be engaged, especially during these special celebrations? So stay tuned to find out. Welcome to the Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, kiri Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech and the easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together.

Carrie Saunders: 1:34

Welcome back to this week's episode of the Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. I am your host, kiri Saunders. Today, we're talking about something a little bit differently celebrating birthdays for the business and for the founders, potentially and how can we use those special dates as business owners to our advantage and to help just celebrate everything and just bring it full circle right. So, first off, in general, celebrating your business birthday or founders birthday is a great opportunity to show appreciation, foster customer loyalty and generate excitement around your brand. Think about it Some of your favorite brands out there If they were to celebrate their business birthday or their founders birthday, wouldn't you be excited? I know that I have several different businesses that I follow and anytime they have a business anniversary, slash birthday, I'm always very excited to see what they're going to come up with, what fun things we're going to do, what maybe celebrations or specials are going to do, and I really kind of get engaged with those businesses during those times. Just last year, for example, we celebrated our 20th anniversary at BCS Engineering and we celebrated with special discounts to clients who retain for us, work for us, regularly, and we wanted to give back to those that were really, you know, always using our services and we wanted to give them a thank you and let them have a special discount on some extra hours so they could bank them up for the new year, because most of our businesses we serve are always looking to, you know, make their websites better and find, you know, those sweet spots that they need to optimize.

Carrie Saunders: 3:18

So what are some creative ideas on how to celebrate and really draw your consumers in to your own birthday celebration for your business? So, first off, you could have a customer appreciation event. This could be online in social media. You could do the special Zoom party. Or, if you have local customers, you could host an exclusive party or event there. You can even do both if you have a mix of local and online business or online customers that you serve.

Carrie Saunders: 3:48

But however you wanna choose to celebrate, you really need to bring your brand personality into it to help further foster long-term relationships. So what kinds of a group are you and or your team, if you have a team. So what really lights you up and brings you joy? Bring some fun aspects of how you like to be celebrated into an event and it will really help create the connections that you want with your consumers. So, just like, if you wanna have a birthday party for yourself or a loved one, you're going to wanna bring those special people to that party that really love that person and you're gonna wanna have activities that that birthday person absolutely loves, and then that's gonna draw everybody that's a guest into the birthday party celebration even more and it's gonna feel even more real to them. So you kinda wanna think of this very similar for you in the business, even though it might sound a little bit weird and unintuitive because it's not, let's say, as professional, maybe, but you can definitely create a good mix of professional and fun and keep the personality of the person or the business in this case that we're talking about that you want to celebrate.

Carrie Saunders: 5:05

Now, in addition to having a customer appreciation event, you could also offer discounts and special offers, kinda like we did for our 20th anniversary. We celebrated it on social media and had all kinds of fun posts. We celebrated it in Nemo, but we also did offer those special discounts and special rates for all of our clients, as well as a bit more even special discounts for those who regularly work with us. So what kind of exclusive offer could you give to your customers on your business's birthday? This could be in the form of a one day sale, a unique coupon or a buy one get one offer. You can also see how you can tie it into your birthday theme too. So let's say you're celebrating your 10 year anniversary for your birthday or for your business birthday. See how you can use the number 10 in your celebrations and discounts. This kinda just reiterates the link that you've been in business and it kinda brings cohesion to the whole situation and event. So, for example, you could spend $100 and get a 10% off, or maybe spend $100 and get $10 off. You can depends upon what you sell and your profit margins. You can, additionally do give the 10th person a free item with their order. So really get creative here, sticking with your theme and keeping the customer in mind. It really helps them get excited about your business birthday and business birthday event.

Carrie Saunders: 6:33

Additionally, you could also do a giveaway. You could do it in conjunction with the other two items we've already talked about or you could do it on its own. So you could hold a contest or giveaway on social media or on your website where your customers can participate and win prizes. You could also do this via email announcements and letting them know via your newsletter that you're doing a special giveaway. The prizes could include your products or services. I would definitely at least include. The giveaway would have something that's at least tangentially aligned with your business too. So even if it's not specifically a product or service that you sell, but complements a product or service you sell, that also would be a really good item to give away.

Carrie Saunders: 7:18

So what can be perfect here is to think of any item that really packs the value. But you also want to keep your budget in mind too. So really kind of weigh the benefits here. If you can do it, give something, a way that, if the person won it, they may consider using your services and your products in the future too. So it'd be really a great win-win if you're not only providing value to the person who won the giveaway, but you're also providing value to yourself by introducing them to say, maybe some new service or some new products that you have. So it can be a really good way to tie together a win-win. Now, obviously, when you're doing birthday celebrations, the consumer is who should be first, first in your mind, but if you can tie it back to you and helping benefit your business too, then that's obviously what we need to do as business owners is to make sure our businesses are sustainable. So think about yourself as well, because I've seen some people do giveaways and things like that and then they didn't think about the fact that they had people nationally and globally, so then they had to ship product to a foreign country and it cost them way more than they expected. Now they were completely happy with it because they were happy about the people who won it. But when you're really coming up with these ideas, think big picture here and really think and make sure that it is going to fit in your budget, because for this person it did, but it wasn't necessarily something that they expected when they initially started doing the giveaway.

Carrie Saunders: 8:49

A few of the things you can do, too, is you can do limited edition products or services, and I feel like this is something you might see more often in the bigger companies, but I don't see why you couldn't do this as a small business owner as well. You really think about it. Let's say you have a service-based business and you normally sell packages A, b and C. Well, what if you could do maybe a mini version of one of those packages as a limited edition product or service that you're going to offer out? Maybe it's a great little sneak peek into the bigger things that you provide. So really think outside here and what could you do? That sounds really cool and really special. That will create excitement and engagement.

Carrie Saunders: 9:40

So really, we think about some limited edition products or services. It can also create a sense of urgency and excitement among your customers if it's only available for a limited amount of time too. As people, we are very great at procrastinating decisions, so when there is a deadline as something like a limited edition product or service, it really kind of makes us, it forces us to really make that decision a bit faster because we know there's a deadline, right. It's kind of like when you're in school and you have homework to do. There are those people who get the homework done early, but most people get it done, I'd have to say, pretty close to the deadline, right, maybe the day before, maybe not quite up to the minute, but most people are going to be waiting closer to the deadline because there aren't forward thinking at that point yet because you know the the brains haven't developed fully. But you can get the idea that consumers also do this as well with purchases, so that limited edition and creates a sense of urgency there.

Carrie Saunders: 10:43

So this is something special that I think is great to not only do during birthday, business birthday celebrations, but you know, it's kind of something that would be wonderful and something that I would love to do in our business and work back up to it again is creating thank you notes so you could send personalized thank you notes or emails to your customers expressing your gratitude for their continued support. You could also, if you wanted, to include a small token of appreciation, such as a discount code or what's even a little bit better, I think is a small gift, because I feel like we want to make sure that we create that balance of. If you give discount codes too much, when you're doing like a birthday or university celebration, it could seem a bit more about you, the business, not about them, the consumer. So you got to balance that out appropriately. But even if it's just simply a handwritten thank you note mailed in the mail or something very personal that is sent an email, that really could you know, connects to that consumer and really does wonders for your relationship with them. I know we used to have more capacity to do these thank you notes and it is something for my goals for 2024 that we can do them again, because we do really appreciate our customers and we just love partnering with them and helping make their lives better by helping with their tech, and I know me personally whenever I buy from people, especially people I know, and I then get a thank you note in the mail. In the mail is what I meant to say, or maybe I might get a personalized thank you text. I actually feel like really good about that. I really enjoy that. I feel special. It's a wonderful way to say I appreciate you without expecting anything back.

Carrie Saunders: 12:39

So that's one of the reasons why I do caution a little bit about giving that discount code on your birthday anniversary. Now you could do it on their birthday if you collect their birthday Dates, but you need to kind of be a little bit cautious and doing it on your anniversary unless it's kind of a big deal. You know, when we did ours last year, we kind of did it a bit of a big deal because our 20th anniversary. So we not only thank their customers but we also gave discount codes if they wanted to on buying bulk hours. So, but we don't do that every year and I think that's important because we want to just stress being thankful, you know, most years and then on the bigger milestones we might do something a little bit more special with the discount code. So see how that sits with you and really feel what is your gut telling you and what does your soul tell you, because as long as you're aligned with what you're doing, you're probably going to get positive results. What you're doing, you're probably going to get positive results. So another really cool thing that you can do, especially if you've been in business for a while, is and even if you haven't really, I mean you could even. There's so many big milestones when businesses are in their first seven years, for example. But you can really start celebrating your company's history.

Carrie Saunders: 13:56

Showcate your history, your milestones, through your blog posts, do videos, social media etc. And let them know how far you come. It's kind of interesting. It will pull them into your story, really tell about how you got started, maybe some of your biggest hurdles, some of your biggest achievements and it kind of will draw them in to your story and really helps solidify that relationship that they have with you.

Carrie Saunders: 14:23

So I think it's something and I know we don't talk about it, probably enough is where we came from. You know I started this business with a laptop and a couch and a nine-but-thold in my living room in 2002 and my whole goal was to help other businesses get their presence online in the e-commerce store back when that wasn't nearly as the thing to do. And you know I really should probably tell that story a bit more. I mean, why not? I know some people find it interesting, especially when I do talk about it. They're like, really I didn't know that You're only like 25 years old, I think I was 25. And so then they really think about please don't add the number together and figure out how old I am now, but anyway. So it's really great to really draw them into where you've been, where you've come from, what you're doing, and I feel like if you do it, you know naturally it's not gonna sound braggy or boastful or anything like that, it's really just gonna sound like a natural storytelling. So really looking at your company history and talking about it is a great thing to do on your business anniversary.

Carrie Saunders: 15:33

Another thing that's really great and it can be a really good way to keep you in the habit of doing this occasionally is ask for customer feedback. This could give you, get you in the habit of doing this at least once a year and really, you know, say thank you for your business. We really appreciate, you know you being a part of us over all these years. We would love to know what are we doing really well right now and what could we improve? Because it's really key to know what are you doing well so you can do more of that thing. What are you not doing as well? I know in over 20 years of business, there's been times I've been really great at this thing and other times that you know we kind of gotten a retin, weren't quite as good at that same thing that we used to be excellent at. So it's really good to be always self-assessing yourself, and you can do that on your business birthday celebrations by asking for feedback from your customers. It's just a really good way to have some self-reflection on your business so that you can continually improve.

Carrie Saunders: 16:40

Okay, so that was a nice quick summary of what you can do, some ideas on how you can celebrate your business's birthday. Obviously, if you've never done it before, please don't try to implement all of those things. You will probably drive yourself crazy. Pick a few that you feel like are really aligned with your personality, your business's personality, and what you think will really resonate with your customers, and go for it and try it out, and I recommend you know as you can build upon it. Maybe throughout the years you could probably, once you get used to doing the other ones keep adding on more to it, not to make it more overwhelming, but to kind of make it a bit more of a complete celebration for you.

Carrie Saunders: 17:21

So, to remember to promote your business's birthday celebration well in advance too this is something I haven't talked about yet and you want to do that through various marketing channels, because we don't always quite know where our customers are going to be at any one point in time. So doing this on social media, in email marketing and on your website you know, cover all your bases of where you normally show up would be a great idea, because you never know you know where they might be at the moment that you're starting to do these celebrations. Also, make sure you're engaging with your customers during the celebration and express your gratitude for their ongoing support, because, as you know, without your customers you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be here in business. And by involving your customers in the celebration, you not only create a memorable event for them, but you also strengthen your customer relationship and brand loyalty. All right, so that's it for this week's episode.

Carrie Saunders: 18:13

We want to hear from you Do you have any special ways to celebrate your business's birthday? If you do, drop us an email at podcast at bcsinjeneeringcom, or message us on social media. Again, that's podcast at bcsinjeneeringcom. We would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear if you have a new way that you might like to celebrate that we didn't mention and that you haven't tried yet. We'd love to hear that as well. So make sure you visit our show notes at ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom forward slash the number 29. So ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom forward slash 29 to get this week's show notes and, as always, we look forward to seeing you again next week. Talk soon.