If you live near Tulsa, Oklahoma—or if your algorithm serves you convenience store content on TikTok—you may know Mary Hatheway, marketing manager at Reeder’s, her family’s c-store. She’s also a local influencer with more than 220,000 followers combined across Instagram and TikTok.
She runs the social media accounts for Reeder’s, which is one of the things she said has made the store really grow. “We’ve basically become a TikTok gas station,” she said. Mary’s videos frequently include her mom, owner Cheryl Reeder.
“My mom and I are known for finding and trying anything that’s trending on the internet and bringing it into the store. We have really tried to make our convenience store very trendy and exciting,” she said. “Reeder’s has been in operation since 1961, but many people didn’t know about what our store offered until we started posting online. Now that’s a reason that people come into the store—they recognize us. Even if I don’t always post about the convenience industry on my personal channels, making myself known online has had a huge impact for promotion.”
Social media is a powerful marketing tool—one with far reach, high engagement and potentially dramatic impact. And, it’s free. It’s one of several tools with a low barrier to entry that independent and small operators can use to their advantage.
Independent and smaller retailers may not always have the funds, resources or employee bandwidth to dedicate specifically toward marketing campaigns. But these retailers also have significant strengths—creativity, the flexibility to test out new ideas, local impact in their community and relationships with their customers—that allow them to have a big voice without spending big money.
Lean In to Local
“Small and independent operators can do things on a very local level that large companies could not pull off,” said Ernie Harker, CMO at Ignite Retail Technology. He said engaging with the community and tailoring campaigns, promotions or events to your customer base is one of the top advantages retailers have for connecting with customers and promoting the store.
“Let’s say you have three stores in southern Louisiana. Host a big crawfish boil. Or celebrate your local high school with a promotion on the last day of school or something for the sports team,” he said. This not only gets people’s attention, but makes customers feel seen and offers an emotional connection to the store.
Yatco Energy, a Massachusetts-based family-run business with 19 stores, sponsors local Little League teams and partners with local colleges to sponsor golf tournaments and other sporting events. “During those, we’ll set up tents, hand out samples and give away free items. We once did a ‘spin-the-wheel to win’ a prize handout, which was fun,” said Hussein Yatim, vice president at Yatco. “Those events get really good engagement. I market them on social media and will send out blasts through our app so that customers know about them.”
Local involvement isn’t just about engaging customers and nearby residents, it’s also about connecting with local businesses in your area. “We all probably underestimate the value of business-to-business relationships,” said Peter Rasmussen, CEO and founder of Convenience and Energy Advisors. “For example, let’s say a convenience store owner gives the local hardware store coupons for free pizza to give to their employees. That investment of starting a relationship just compounds, from bringing in new everyday customers to that store manager coming back to you and saying, ‘Hey, I’m having a lunch for my employees. Can I buy it from you?’”
Break Out—Don’t Blend In
Small operators can embrace bold design that tells a story about their brand. “Think about what you want to be known for,” said Ernie Harker of Ignite Retail Technology. “A lot of stores end up blending in with the lowest common denominator and focus on being fast, friendly and convenient—but that’s what everybody’s about, and there likely isn’t enough differentiation in your product offering to drive preference.”
Harker formerly worked in marketing for Maverik and pointed to the brand’s outdoor and adventure themed branding. “That becomes distinctive. It attracts people. So what can a small operator do to embrace a theme around something they love?” One good example, he said, is Native American tribal retailers that embrace their culture throughout the store. “That makes them so unique, and when visitors come it makes them want to stop and shop there because they’re not just going to a store, they’re engaging with the culture of an area and a people. I would love to see more operators invest in a richer, more immersive, thematic brand that can influence the architecture, interior design, marketing and advertising of their location,” said Harker.
Recently, Yatco underwent a rebranding that made the company’s “chain of mom-and-pop stores,” as Hussein Yatim of Yatco Energy put it, more cohesive. His father, who started with one store in the 1990s, had expanded the business but the company didn’t have a thematic look and feel, he explained. “You could go into five different Yatco c-stores and you wouldn’t know. Everything was different.”
They worked with a third-party company to develop a brand that was recognizable across the state. “I wanted customers to know that when they see a Yatco, it won’t be like any c-store in the market. Now, we have merch (t-shirts, hats, a winter beanie, etc.,) and when someone wears it around town, people are seeing that logo over and over again and start to recognize it,” Yatim said.
“For one of our new locations at the base of where two major highways intersect, we put up a billboard with the Yatco logo. There are probably 80,000 to 100,000 cars coming down that road a day. So every day, people are seeing the logo coming into the city, and even if they don’t come to the store, you hit them over and over again,” he added. “That’s done a lot for brand awareness and appeal.”
All In on AI
Babir Sultan, owner of five Fav Trip stores in the Kansas City, Missouri area, has always marketed his store creatively online. You might have seen his YouTube channel, where he posts security camera footage of shoplifters getting caught in the store. He was also an early adopter of AI for the convenience business, and one of the new ways he’s using it now is to create fully AI-generated commercials.
He debuted the first commercial in early 2025, noting that the script, visuals, voiceover narration and music composition were all produced through various AI platforms.
“This isn’t just a commercial—it’s a showcase of how AI can transform creativity. By combining multiple AI tools, we’ve demonstrated how technology can streamline the creative process and deliver high-quality results,” he said on LinkedIn.
For small operators, AI can be a great tool for generating creative materials in a low cost and efficient way. “Some retailers are having phenomenal results with AI. They’re able to produce marketing that previously they didn’t have the time or bandwidth to do. Now they can create their own images instantly without having to hire multiple people or contract creatives,” said Ernie Harker of Ignite Retail Technology. “Many people will say, ‘We’re just a gas station. We don’t need AI.’ But the ones who are leaning in and investing some time into it for creative production are seeing tremendous benefits and will be able to compete better than those who don’t.”
He said one easy place to start with AI is by generating social media posts. You can ask ChatGPT, for example, to draft posts related to your brand, seasonal offers or items you want to promote.
Curated Content
Even when she’s not directly promoting Reeder’s, Hatheway said growing her own personal brand online has helped direct attention back to the store and connect her with other local businesses. She will often have a Reeder’s hat or shirt on while filming an unrelated video. “There’s always hints,” she said.
But more importantly, she said she and her mom have made themselves local personalities. “People in the community know us both from the store and from our videos. They feel like they’re our friends, that they get to know us through our content, and therefore they trust us, our reviews and our business.”
During Covid, when other restaurants and businesses were forced to shut down, Reeder took to social media to share content about the store’s fresh food program and in-house chef. “My mom had a whole set up with a table and mics in the automotive shop, and she’d eat new dishes to show people that we were still open and cooking and that the food was high quality. The guys in the background were working on the vehicles, and it was just a really fun way that we marketed the store at the time,” said Hatheway.
Another strategy—lean on local influencers who already have a platform and partner with them to try your food on their channels. “It feels authentic and it will generate a lot of impressions for your brand,” said Rasmussen.
And while social media is free, you realistically will have to spend a little bit of money to get the reach you want. “With social media, there’s too much stuff out there and organic posts don’t grow the way they used to, so you don’t want to rely only on that. But you can spend $10 per day just to add a little gasoline on the fire and expand your reach. And, it will help you localize your messaging. It’s fairly inexpensive,” said Harker.
Leverage Your Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs are great for keeping customers and building baskets, but operators may not be using them to their full potential. “A lot of operators don’t use their loyalty program for marketing, they just use it for promotions. But you need to communicate with your customers, keep in front of them and build connection,” said Harker.
He said that operators should share their personality and messaging through loyalty apps the same way they do on social media. “Your loyalty program already has an audience. Use it for engagement, don’t make it only offer based.”
Yatim said Yatco will run contests and sweepstakes through its app and has given away things like coolers and skateboards with simple tap-to-enter programs. “It’s fun and it creates engagement, and it gets customers to interact with our brand.”
Sell Your Signature
A great way to gain acclaim in your market is to be known for something—something customers can’t get anywhere else, said Harker. His advice: Develop a signature product that customers can only come to you for. “That local thing everyone loves and can’t live without.”
Some ideas include using a family recipe, being the best place in town for sloppy joes, frying up can’t-miss hushpuppies to go with your southern menu, selling next-level french fries with unique toppings or the world’s-best roasted peanuts.
“Come up with something that you can execute consistently and that’s highly different and crave-worthy, so that when people drive by they’re like, ‘I have to stop, I can’t drive by this place without getting X.’” he said. “And then, give it a good name! Sell t-shirts for it.”
“This kind of thing makes a small operator defensible from big competitors that could come in with big budgets and the same standard products. Locals will support their store,” Harker added. “When operators only focus on functionality and not personality, the competition can come in and solve the same problems. Really think about what makes your store different.”