It’s Election Day here in the United States, and while most people try to separate politics from their businesses and friendships, there were quite a few savvy business owners who embraced it instead.

With voters as opinionated as ever this year, some businesses decided to create a new kind of voting system that lets guests vote with their taste buds. If you ever needed inspiration for a creative promotion, look to these businesses for guidance!

The ice-cream lickers of Udder Delights in Mesa, Arizona predicted the outcome between Obama and Romney in the last presidential election through a little ice cream voting contest that they successfully re-invented for 2012.

Small business owners that are strapped for time often get into a habit of cross-promoting their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Although Twitter has shut down some of the cross-promotion lines, business owners can still auto-post their Facebook updates as tweets.

This strategy might seem like you’re hitting two birds with one stone, but in reality, you’re alienating your Twitter audience. The trouble with this strategy is that any savvy Twitter user can take one look at a feed full of fb.me links (short URLs that Facebook creates for Twitter) and quickly determine that nobody is behind the wheel.

ERR stands for “Enhanced Recover Reduced”, and it is the most opaque pricing structure in the payments industry.

Many describe ERR pricing as a “bait and switch” scheme. Unscrupulous processors use ERR to accomplish two goals:

1. To give one simple, low “quoted” rate to the merchant in order to gain their business
2. To thereafter extract as much possible profit through a confusing table of hidden surcharges

The biggest cost in payments is Interchange: the non-negotiable rates set by Visa and Mastercard and passed to card-issuing banks.

As our culture continues to focus on economic issues and a need for austerity, the desire for incentives and rewards will keep on growing! However, growth in technology, with most people accessing information and engaging with their favorite brands on multiple screens, is changing how customers want those incentives to be delivered.

This presents both challenges and opportunities for social media savvy business owners, as their networks “open the doors to new types of customer experiences by connecting you with them when they are a few feet away from their stores,” says the Customer Loyalty Institute, which also notes that social media is transforming loyalty programs “by identifying problems through monitoring what people are saying about their brands.”

When it comes to customer demographics, a lot of buzz surrounds attracting and building loyalty with millennials. If you’re a restaurant owner, it might interest you that a recent article in Nation’s Restaurant News cites dining rates of baby boomers and seniors increased in 2011, while those of younger adults declined because of the economy.

Restaurant owners using Swipely already have the advantage of a powerful demographics tool with which to process payments, and target and build loyalty at the same time.

Most marketing ideas for small businesses come from other competing small businesses. However, if you’ve been paying attention the last couple of decades, you’ve seen how Apple has grown from small-business status to world-domination. Jayme Pretzloff, the online marketing director for Wixon Jewelers, summarizes Apple’s success well, “If you look at the typical Apple customer, they are loyal, generate hype and are walking testimonials for their products.”

We suspect Apple’s magic lies in fantastic brand consistency and forward-thinking. They know their demographics, and the demographics they’d like to reach.

Imagine if every day you could check in on the health of your customer base in order to transform newcomers into regulars and get regulars to spend more.

This is possible through “remarketing.” Remarketing is a popular online approach that lets merchants reach consumers who have previously visited their site. It happens 24/7, and you have probably noticed it in the form of advertisements that follow you around the web, or emails that remind you what products you left in a shopping cart.

Wouldn’t you like to know how much your most loyal customers have spent in the last month, six months or year? This key performance indicator (KPI) is commonly on the dashboards of business owners invested in the loyalty of their customers. Repeat purchases give you a better look into how well your loyalty efforts are succeeding (or how badly they’re failing).

According to Execution-MiH, the higher your repeat purchase value, the better you’re doing to keep customers loyal:

• Higher repeat purchase value means a well-retained, satisfied customer.

Anna Everhart, mom to a three- and a five-year-old says that she and her husband “are always blown away by the lack of details that would make it a little easier for parents–especially in the restaurant industry.” She’s not alone. It’s time to ask yourself what you can do differently to welcome families and make your restaurant experience better for parents and kids.

Is your restaurant appealing to families dining out? Small business owners using Swipely know that answer, because they have access to customer demographic information, a powerful tool for targeting and building loyalty.

When you read the word “advertising,” you think “paid,” but social advertising is paving a way to a less expensive, albeit time intensive, new marketing medium.

In fact, Brant Barton from Bazaarvoice Blog says that consumer-to-consumer is the next phase of social advertising, or social media marketing. Most small business owners know just how important social advertising is. However, they still invest in paper promotions that don’t connect with customers–Barton considers this wasted marketing in an age where connection is the key.