Small businesses have a lot of benefits over larger companies. They’re more agile and able to change quickly, more in touch with what their customers want, and offer a more direct line from customer service to management but what they don’t have often is resources.

They’re strapped for time because they don’t have a lot of layers of employees, their technology offerings (for non-tech businesses) take longer to develop, and all employees play multiple roles in the business.

Your Chamber Can (Easily) Help Your Town’s Small Business

While you’re already helping small businesses in town through meaningful introductions and additional advertising, you can help without any additional drain on your resources with a chamber gift certificate program.

The administrative tasks behind creating a gift certificate or gift card program is more than most small merchants want to take on. Even if they do, paying to get them printed and coordinating the purchasing often makes them too labor intensive to be worth the effort.

But your chamber can start a gift certificate program in a matter of months that handles all of the:

• printing
• selling
• tracking
• paying
• advertising

And you can do all of that with only a few minutes out of your month to run a payment report and make a trip to your merchants with checks.

And who doesn’t love the person who comes to pay them?

With an online local currency program, your chamber can sell gift certificates from your website negating the need to have people buy only during chamber hours. You can give your merchants information on how people are spending them and the revenue they’re receiving from this exclusive program. That alone may pay for their yearly dues. Plus you have additional opportunities from non-dues revenue through sponsorships and advertising.

Take the worry from your local businesses and be the hero without adding hours of additional work on yourself. Give them the ability to offer gift certificates without the headache.

You don’t have to mention how easy it is. We won’t tell.

Image credit via Flickr by Memphis CVB