March 3, 2022 UPDATE: The Canadian Government has announced the Canada Digital Adoption Program, which provides grants to small and medium-sized businesses of up to $2400 to take advantage of e-commerce opportunities. Learn more here.
The Grow Your Business Online grant will help up to 90,000 small businesses take advantage of e-commerce opportunities.
A grant of up to $2,400 to help with the costs related to adopting digital technologies. Grants will be available through local and regional service providers across Canada.
Canada Day brings welcome news for main street businesses in the Owen Sound, Meaford, Thornbury and Collingwood areas. Digital Mainstreet, the popular government program designed to help brick-and-mortar retailers, restaurants, and other downtown businesses, is back.
This time, in addition to grants to help improve your digital business savvy, Digital Mainstreet has introduced ShopHERE, a program designed to help you open an online storefront.
Digital Mainstreet, which kicked off last year, proved to have fortuitous timing for some small town businesses; as the COVID-19 crisis hit, they were already arming themselves with e-commerce and improving their online presence. Play It Again Sports in Collingwood, already a downtown fixture, opened its online store earlier this month. In addition to showcasing their sporting goods products in their online store, they’re fulfilling orders for team apparel for the Clearview Canucks, Georgian Bay Titans, and Collingwood Off-road Cycling Club, complete with personalized names and numbers.
During the last few months, myFavoriteMarketer has worked alongside Digital Mainstreet’s Ben Frisch, Digital Services Squad leader for the Collingwood to Owen Sound area. We’ve enjoyed helping clients such as Play It Again Sports, Thornbury’s Good Grief Coffee (with Mayka Marketing), and South Georgian Bay Tourism with e-commerce, SEO, and custom WordPress solutions.
Under Digital Mainstreet’s Digital Transformation Grant Program, you could receive up to $2,500 to enlarge your digital marketing and business toolkit – including such things as website development or enhancement, e-commerce, online advertising and more. (And word has it that the on-boarding tutorials have been streamlined this round to help you get your digital grant faster.)
The new ShopHERE program helps you launch an online store on the Shopify e-commerce platform at no cost during the initial set-up and trail period.
Help future-proof your store by sharpening your digital offerings. Get in touch with the Ben and the South Georgian Bay Digital Service Squad.
And we’d love to help. Don’t hesitate to contact us to learn more about how you can put digital tools like e-commerce, content marketing, and SEO to work for your business.