COVID-19 RELIEF AND RECOVERY
IT’S ALL ABOUT DIGITAL
Grech suggested you can also use your time to build up your
digital presence.
“Get your online system running, get an app going, redesign
your website, get started with social media. Many small businesses
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have been slow to do this but now is time.”
Email and search engine optimization are the most profitable
digital marketing methods and that hasn’t changed with
COVID-19. But email open rates have spiked 5% higher. And text
messaging and even direct mail are also likely good ways to reach
customers while they are sheltering at home, said Grech, who is
moving BizHack offerings online for the time being.
LOOKING FOR THE OPPORTUNITIES
“In our partnership with Business Development Board of
Martin County executive Joan Goodrich and her great team, I
have seen a number of Martin County-based businesses seeking
to make the best of this bad situation — turning problems into
opportunities,” said Katherine Culhane, associate director, Florida
SBDC at Indian River State College. “These Martin County businesses
clearly understand that assisting
clients through difficult times allows them
to build long-term customer and client relationships
that last well beyond the crisis.”
Martin County’s H2Ocean Natural
Products team Eddie Kolos, founder,
and Scott Stier, vice president recently
announced they were scaling back
local manufacturing operations for its
antibacterial foam soaps, which first hit
the market in 2004, to help serve the
needs of our community and beyond.
With its lobby closed, Stuart Sound
Animal Hospital continues to ensure pets
receive the care they need via a curbside
drop-off model. After gathering all
pertinent information over the phone, the
owner meets a tech in the parking lot to retrieve the animal. Care
is administered, payment is done by phone and pet and owner
are reunited. The model is a major success and limits interactions
between individuals.
Waste Management recently announced several unprecedented
steps designed with health and safety, as well as economic
well-being, in mind. It will guarantee up to 40 hours of pay per
week for employees; the development of work-from-home
solutions for its call centers, sales centers, dispatch centers;
the shared services team and other office employees who can
reasonably complete their work from a remote location; and aggressive
steps to provide safe social distancing between drivers,
helpers, landfill and transfer employees, recycle workers and all
others in field operations.
As these Treasure Coast small businesses show, with these challenges
comes opportunity.
“Now is a moment when we are all in danger and we all have
unprecedented opportunity,” Grech said. “It’s really a matter of
frame of mind. If you are in a siege mentality and you are looking at
erosion of your revenue and asking how will I survive, you are feeling
the danger part of the crisis. But there is an opportunity part
as well. There’s an opportunity to reinvent your business to service
your customers, to think creatively to transform your business.
“Focus as much as you can on the opportunity.” v
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