First of all, I hope you, your loved ones, and your team members are safe during these unprecedented times.

I picked up our son at the airport Friday night after his university closed in-person classes. On the way home, we talked about the history that we are all witnessing. While we can and should do our part, we cannot give in to fear of the what-ifs. 

Isaiah 41:10 tells us to “Fear Not, for I AM with you.” While everything that is happening is hard to understand, I believe we can rest in this promise.

Whether we share the same beliefs or not, we CAN support and care for each other. Call and check in with your neighbors. Offer an encouraging message or practical help. Buy a gift card from a local restaurant. Treat retail workers with respect and patience. Share your toilet paper 🙂

Together, we WILL get through this. 

Secondly, we have shifted our team to an all-remote operation to do our part to practice social distancing and stay healthy. Fortunately, the nature of our industry allows us to work remotely as needed without any interruption in the services that we provide. We are well-prepared to use Zoom video conferencing for meetings since it is a tool we already use a lot with customers around the country. 

If you’re looking for tools to help your team operate efficiently and remotely, here are three of the tools we use on a daily basis. 

If you have any questions about how these tools may be able to help you, please feel free to reach out to us at 503.581.4554 or sending an email to [email protected]. Also, if you need to do a virtual meeting and would like assistance in the short-term, we’d be happy to help provide guidance or facilitate a meeting using one of our Zoom accounts at no charge (subject to availability). We can accommodate up to 100 people. 

Third, while it may be counterintuitive, this is a great time to work on your marketing. While I’m coming at this from a place of obvious bias, during every crisis and economic downturn in history, there have been businesses that took market share away from those that became ultra-conservative. And, they kept the business after the economic recovery. 

Developing an intentional, omnichannel marketing plan is going to be more important than ever. Omnichannel marketing is an integrated approach in which each channel works together to create a unified brand message and voice for your company. From a digital strategy, this centers around your …

  1. Online Presence
  2. Reputation (reviews, recommendations, and referrals)
  3. Reach (how you reach new customers)

It also includes offline marketing channels as well and using all channels together in an efficient and unified way. 

Plus, a content marketing strategy that involves …

  1. Creating or capturing new content
  2. Sharing that content everywhere
  3. Promoting your best content with paid ads

We have been working very hard over the past few months to release an all-new, omnichannel marketing feature on WhirLocal.io. We call it Groups, and it is both a powerful content marketing and syndication tool and a new opportunity for all of our businesses to rethink how we market ourselves in our local areas.

If you’d like a sneak peek of how it works, or to chat and brainstorm about your marketing strategy, we’re here to help. You can give us a call at 503.581.4554 or schedule a time that works best for you by clicking on the button below.

Finally, we appreciate you greatly. We are better together. 

Tim Fahndrich
Co-founder & CEO
Third River Marketing | Hardscape Marketer | WhirLocal.io
503.581.4554