Marketing Strategies for Mom and Pop Shops in 2025
Small businesses – specifically the individual- or family-owned businesses commonly referred to as “mom and pop shops” – are the backbone of their community.
Engagement with that community could be the key to growing your local following, while keeping your marketing costs low.
Start the new year with this idea in mind, and you’ll find that with a little creativity and a lot of networking, the kind of free and low-cost marketing you can do right in your community may yield better results than if you spent a lot of money hiring an agency to do it for you.
Business Organizations
Look into what business organizations exist in your community, county, or region. There may be a Chamber of Commerce, a small business association, or local service organizations. Joining these groups will allow you to get to know other business people in your community with whom you can form mutually valuable associations. You’ll also get valuable educational opportunities and be the first to hear of events, publications, and such that you can use to get your name into the public awareness.
Sponsorships
Pay attention to sponsorship opportunities in your community. Ask your local recreation department about sponsoring a sports team. Monitor your municipal and regional websites for opportunities to be a sponsor for a community event.
Some communities offer opportunities to buy nameplates, bricks, signage, or other passive outdoor marketing space in public places like parks or along the main road. These local sponsorship opportunities are often surprisingly inexpensive and put you squarely in the public eye in the place where you need the most exposure.
Community Events
Your community life may be more vibrant than you realize. There may be a wide variety of opportunities for you to get out in public, selling some of your products, raising awareness about your service, offering fun, creative, or educational opportunities, and giving your neighbors a chance to put a face to the name.
Outdoor markets, arts festivals, and the like may be inexpensive ways to put you in the path of hundreds or thousands of neighbors who will be happy to get to know you.
Host Events
Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar shop or a home-based service, you can use your creativity to organize a special event that will engage potential customers with your brand.
Whether it’s a class in your store or a party at the local senior center, you can put yourself out in the community as a place to have a good time and maybe learn something. You can use social media to promote the event; also, check if your community has a newsletter to which you can contribute a free announcement.
Have a Sale
If you sell physical products, a well-advertized sale can bring in new traffic and earn you repeat customers.
If you sell an intangible service, offering a coupon for a discount will have the same effect. You might think you can’t afford to lower your prices, but if you offer a set discount for a specific period of time, the business it earns you will reward you many times over.
The key is to use your social media, email, and paid advertising avenues to broadcast the news about this great money-saving opportunity.
Decorate Your Shop
If you have a brick-and-mortar shop, you have a blank canvas for marketing: use your storefront to attract customers.
Decorating with various banner types and flags is an inexpensive, visually engaging way to draw attention, which will bring you casual drive-by traffic over and above the beauty of your signage or front window. Potential customers drive and walk past your shop all day long, and if you make your property stand out with colorful displays, they’ll remember it and think of you first when the need arises for the type of service you provide.
Aside from that, you can use these decorative marketing devices to draw attention to a special sale or promotion. If they didn’t see your social media or email announcements, they’ll see your outdoor visuals every time they drive or walk past.
Form Partnerships
Take a few minutes to brainstorm about what kinds of services your customers might use in conjunction with your product or service. Look up businesses in your community that provide those products and services, and invite them to partner with you on an event or to write a guest blog post for your website.
The public attention this can garner will be valuable to you and your partner. This circles back to the idea of joining a local business organization in order to get to know your neighbors with whom partnerships are possible.
Referral Programs
Advertise a referral program: reward the existing customer if a new customer identifies an existing customer as having referred them to you. This reward could come in the form of a discount for a future purchase or a small gift.
There are many services that can help you put together an inexpensive monthly newsletter to provide your followers with useful information. Your website package may include email marketing. Use this to advertise upcoming events and provide your readers with articles related to your service.
For example, if you have a household service such as gutters, pools, or landscaping, advise your readers about seasonal maintenance they may not have known was necessary. If you’re a realtor, include an article about getting organized for a move.
Even if you don’t go as far as running a monthly newsletter, you can use email to announce events such as sales or classes. Not a writer? Use social media to find a ghostwriter in your community who can help you.
Social Media
Everyone knows small businesses can advertise on social media. This may be one of the cheapest ways to advertise, and it comes with tools to help you measure the performance of the ads so you’re in control. You don’t necessarily have to pay to advertise, though, if you’re adept at posting regularly.
Indeed, post regularly, but make sure your posts are useful to your customers. Be sure to separate the content on your business page from the content on your personal page, no matter how closely intertwined your business and personal lives may be.
Put links in your posts to useful articles, blog posts from businesses whose products or services dovetail with yours, and anything else you think your social media readers might find helpful. Just be careful not to link to your competitors. Search engine algorithms follow links within posts, which can increase your traffic and grow your following.
Leverage Your Team
Encourage your employees to follow your pages and share your posts. In addition to your own following, each of your employees has their own roster of friends and followers who may not be aware of your business but who might find your posts useful.
Not only that, but involving your employees in this way may make them feel more connected to your business and you. You could even create an internal referral program, awarding employees who directly bring your business some kind of perk.
Use Your Creativity
Marketing need not be expensive; you just have to be thoughtful and creative about how to maximize your limited marketing budget. As a mom-and-pop shop, the most important thing you can do is increase your engagement and visibility with your community. Use your marketing money to devote your precious energy toward creating those opportunities.
