When you significantly limit the movement of people, commerce becomes that much harder. The new partnership between Kabbage and Facebook wants to give a boost to this commerce by helping local small businesses generate more revenue during the COVID-19 crisis.
Kabbage and Facebook Gift Certificates Platform
Kabbage is bringing its financial expertise with small businesses and Facebook the accessibility of its platform. The integration will give small businesses across the U.S. another way to generate revenue by offering online gift certificates to local customers looking to support their communities.
The benefit for local small businesses is they get the marketing power of both Kabbage and Facebook shining a light on their company. And this is just what the CEO of Kabbage, Rob Frohwein, explains in the press release.
Frohwein says small businesses are the most impacted in this crisis. Adding, “Now with the powerful reach of Facebook, small business owners have greater opportunity to share gift certificate offers to the communities that rely upon them.”
The Push to Help Small businesses
In addition to this partnership with Facebook, the initiative Kabbage started is a call to action across the entire business sector. The company is empowering U.S. small businesses to generate critical revenue. Kabbage is not profiting from this effort and the companies it is partnering with have also pledged similar commitments.
So, how can you sign up your small business? It only takes three easy steps.
- Create a free account through Kabbage Payments, provide your business information and connect the account where you want the revenue deposited.
- Start offering online gift certificates. Customers can buy gift certificates of $15 to $500. Share your unique URL with them and they can start purchasing.
- The revenue for each gift card purchase will be deposited in your bank account the following banking day. Transactions are processed by 5pm ET. Transactions after 5pm ET will be deposited in your bank account within two banking days.
You can signup at Help Small Business.
Increasing Discovery
The benefit of having Facebook in this partnership is it increases the discovery of your business by getting more eyes on your gift card.
After you set up your gift card with Kabbage share a post about it. You can use the three templates right here from Facebook or create your own. Follow the template with a story about your gift card to further increase the awareness and go live. Call out how to buy your gift card in a Live session to your followers.
You can further increase your presence by joining Facebook Groups with small businesses like yours. It is another resource for learning, sharing tips, best practices, emergency preparedness and socializing.
The goal is to stay in touch with your colleagues and existing customers while Increasing the discovery of your business. As the lockdown conditions are prolonged, here are some steps you can take to keep you and your customers informed about you, your business, the virus and any new developments.
Five Steps to Stay Connected
- Stay informed about the latest development about the coronavirus. Make sure to get the information from reliable sources, such as the CDC and the WHO. You can then keep your customers informed by posting it on your site or answering their questions.
- Keep in touch with your customers by sharing the above information or any other news you think is relevant. Use social media to spread your reach.
- If your business is not online, now is a great time to do it. If it is online, now is also a great time to optimize your site to increase your eCommerce and work on your marketing.
- Generate automated responses for your customers so they can get an answer to some common questions even if you are not online or open.
- Similar to the automated responses create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page with detailed answers. Once you have it up, make sure to update the information anytime there are changes.
The coronavirus will eventually die down, but until it does small business owners have to adapt to the current conditions. In most cases, this means an increased online presence. Now is a good time to learn or brush up on all things digital so you can hit the road running when the lockdown measures are lifted.
Image: Kabbage