Give your small business an edge over your competitors by getting involved with your local community. This is a great way to help build your brand, win new customers and raise the profile of your small business. With so many SMEs failing within the first five years, it’s important to make your business stand out from the crowd in the best way possible. We’ve summarised some tried and tested ways on how you can get your small business involved with your community.
Resources
Having a dedicated member of staff whose sole focus is to strengthen social responsibility is a luxury that many SMEs can’t afford to have. Instead, you can either split it out across the team, and each come with suggestions, or if there is a member of staff who is particularly keen for it, then you can also make it part of their job description to identify and organise causes that your small business can get involved with. Based on how many staff members you have, it would be expected for you as the owner to get stuck in as well and help drive the campaign with your members of staff.
Get Involved
It makes good business sense to get involved with local causes. Get your company involved with local events such as charity runs for the local primary school, food donations for homeless shelters or donations at animal shelters are all great ways to get your company known in the local community and help create a positive brand identity by association. Other than cash donations to charities, many small business owners find it more beneficial to the community by volunteering at local causes. Community projects where you can get the locals involved is a great way to not only further raise your profile but also help raise spirits within the community.
Collaborate
Depending on your sector you can also collaborate with other SMEs within the same community. For example, if you are operating within the food and beverage industry, team up with other f&b merchants that compliment your brand and product offering to create a free local food and drink pop up market for neighbourhood. In addition to the added exposure you will gain from this, it’s also a great networking exercise and brand building awareness piece. This collaboration should be seen as a big part of getting the support your small business needs.
Board member
If you want to try and take things even further, you can work to raise your brand awareness by getting involved with your community by becoming a board member. There’s always an opportunity to do so once you have identified a cause to get behind – such as sports, council-run community projects such as games halls or gyms.
Becoming a board member is a great way to connect your business with the community and is another effective way to further enhance your brand image, get connected to other business owners who share the same passion and of course not forgetting the main objective of the whole exercise – the opportunity to get involved and help better your community.