With 🦠Covid-19🦠 still lurking (such a jerk!) and slow re-openings *carefully* occurring – there’s been a definite push everywhere to “think local.”
🛍 Shop local.
🍽 Dine local.
🏖 Vacay local.In fact, the Ontario government recently launched their “Shop Local! Shop Safe! Shop with Confidence!” campaign. The gist of the campaign is to encourage mayors, local leaders, and other groups to take to their social media accounts and launch the rallying cry – “Shop Local, Shop Safe and Shop with Confidence” while also encouraging business owners to create a safe space for people to gather or shop.
As Prabmeet Sarkaria, Associate Minister of Small Business says, “The countless stories of success from our diverse small business community is living proof that Ontario is a place to grow and achieve big dreams. All of our small businesses supported the fight against COVID-19, many by closing their doors for several months—now it’s our turn to help support their recovery. When Ontarians Shop Local, Shop Safe and Shop with Confidence, we’re doing our part to ensure the future vitality of our main streets, our communities and our province.”
Yes. We feel that! Quite strongly in fact!
Get Your Buy Local Messaging Right!
There’s also an amazing opportunity for small to medium sized businesses to support each other and align together (where possible) to get through this next pandemic hump. 😬
This idea of local has been around for a while. But now more than ever, people want to hear this messaging.
Our most recent 4 AM Report guest, Kerri Beaulieu, is the marketing manager at ClimateCare Canada, a cooperative of heating and cooling businesses.
And we happen to (**INSERT CAVEAT**) do some work with her! ClimateCare Canada are a cooperative of heating and cooling businesses – approximately 30 local, independent, family owned businesses across Ontario, that do heating, cooling, air quality water heaters, fireplaces, and so forth.
The best part about their story, about this cooperative – is that it was formed in 1992! Those 30 rather forward-thinking businesses came together and said “Instead of us being competitors, let’s figure out a way to work together. There’s got to be ways we can work together to make this a better place to work!’
And here at c+p digital, we really stand behind that feeling of teamwork. In fact, it’s how we’ve built and grown our company as well. TEAMWORK!
Anyhow, Kerri’s one of our favourite people (let’s face it – you get a get a good client, you hang on for dear life, correct??) and she has worked with us in various capacities across multiple organizations.
We talked about how ClimateCare are digging DEEP into this “local” on a business front and converting it into how best to serve their immediate area, their communities.
It’s a super cool conversation.
Community FIRST!
“Our project now is to make sure that our communities know that we’re community based and that we really do care about our customers and we want to take care of them. We were talking about this before, Susan, how the psychographics of our customer has shifted. What was important to them maybe six months ago, is very different now. People are living in their bubble. They want to support their community. They want to know the businesses they work with are supporting their community. ‘Shop Local! Shop Safe! Shop with Confidence!’ I think that’s a really well said slogan. And I’m wondering what kind of things are beyond just saying, yay, we’re a local business. The customer always has come first in our organizations. Every member of ClimateCare tries to really ingrain themselves in the community. So, you know, supporting baseball and sports teams is huge in our area. We do charitable work in our area, we work with the hospitals, we work with different initiatives to offer support to our community. And one thing I noticed, with a lot of my members, I’ll say, ‘I’ll use this design company or use this web company.’ and they’re like, ‘No, I want to use my local guy.’ So, they really do practice what they preach. They really want to use their own local people, which I think is very commendable and I think that’s very important.”
Walk the Talk
“One of the initiatives that we have been undertaking on social media is all our contests – all the prizes – are around supporting local. Supporting your local restaurant. Supporting a local business. We’re not going to give away big amazon gift card these days, we want to give away something that’s going back to the community. You can even tell, the responses of those contests, how people really are appreciating that. Even the other local businesses are really appreciating that, and then there’s reciprocal respect and cross promotion that I think is really helpful in my local initiative. You’re automatically amplifying by shouting out other people, often when people say, Okay, I’m all about Buy Local, it’s like buy from me, instead of spotlighting all the others and it makes a lot of sense. I can tell you for sure. For me, it’s a draw for me when someone’s like, okay, here’s the gift card to a smaller business in that’s going to impact your community.”
Drumming up Business in the Time of Covid-19
“I don’t think a lot of people put too much attention to their comfort and what’s going on in their home. It’s their home. It’s where they’re comfortable. You just kind of take it for granted. But with the shift in schedules and people being home more and the kids being home more and the doors opening and shutting every day, people showering at different times of the day. Our homes’ HVAC systems are working on overdrive. So, we thought it was a good opportunity to remind people how to do things better in your home. And it seems like right now, people are listening a little bit more, you know, what are the practical tips that you can do in five minutes, or 30 minutes. This might be a good time to think about an air filtration or ventilation system in your home, because we want the air that we’re breathing in our homes to be as clean as possible. I think a lot of times people might not realize that heating and cooling also deals with air quality, but they’re one in the same. It’s all the circulation of air within your home, we just thought [Covid-19] was a great opportunity to revisit that topic in the new normal with our lives being different. Whereas, the home was closed down from nine to five every day, it’s not now. So, let’s take this time, this opportunity to help you make your home better.”
Of course, there’s much more on the actual episode, so have a listen if you can, and you can find us on Apple Podcasts – subscribe to us – you won’t regret it!
Plus, if you’re losing sleep over a particular marketing/business related problem during this Covid-19 economic uncertainty, or if you have a guest idea on the topic, let us know. Drop us a line at C+P Digital.
And as always, sweet dreams…well, hopefully!
