Harvest Days runs today, Sept. 10, through Sunday. If you’re reading this in Friday’s paper, it’s already started. If it landed in your mailbox Saturday, it’s more than half over. Either way, the Chamber has spent all week telling visitors in town to go spend money at local businesses. That’s free foot traffic pointed straight at your door, right now.
Not all of that goodwill turns into a sale. The person standing in front of you doesn’t always want to buy something for themselves. A grandparent in town for the festival wants to leave a few dollars for their grandkid to spend next time they’re up. A cabin owner heading out of town wants to treat a friend who’s watching the place while they’re gone. Someone who loved their meal last night wants to send someone they know back home in for the same thing.
Right now, most small businesses in Ely have no way to take that money. No gift card, nothing to hand over. So it leaves town with whoever felt like spending it.
A resort in town already runs something like this. When their bonus certificates go on sale, spend $100 and get $20 back in certificates, good toward a room, a meal at the restaurant, or anything else on the property.
Locals buy them too, not just as holiday gifts. Every dollar goes further than cash, so people stock up and spend the extra on themselves later. That turns a stranger’s goodwill and a local’s own spending into the same thing: money that comes back to you.
This week: pull a free gift certificate template from Canva, put your business name on it, and build in a bonus scaled to what you sell. A lodge or outfitter can run the resort’s own math, $100 spent gets $20 back in certificates. A shop or cafe with a smaller average sale can scale it down, $25 gets a $30 certificate.
Print it on cardstock, at home or on a borrowed printer if you don’t have one. Add one line: not redeemable for cash. Number each one by hand on the back and log it in a notebook by the register so you know what’s still outstanding.
Down the road, once you’ve sold a few, The Ely Echo’s print shop can run these in bulk on heavier cardstock. They close at 3 p.m. Friday and are closed weekends, so treat it as a weekday errand and work out format and cost with their design and print staff.
Then make it easy to find: a small printed sign by the register, and one email to the list you built in column two. If that list has past customers on it, use the same email as a thank-you: tell them you’ll see them this winter, spring, or summer, and that a certificate makes an easy stocking stuffer or a smart way to stock up for themselves. Sell your first one before the weekend is out.
Richard Stuart builds websites and revenue systems for owner-operated businesses from his home in Ely. Have a question you’d like answered in a future column? Send it to [email protected]. If something’s quietly costing you customers, let’s talk: richardstuart.me.
