Members of DFK UK & Ireland a leading association of independent accounting firms have been talking to their clients and contacts in order to understand how businesses are repurposing through the COVID-19 lock-down.
In the third in a series of articles, Caroline Cassidy, Executive Officer for DFK UK & Ireland spoke to Lauren Okurch from Nettl in Dublin.
Nettl of Dublin is a creative marketing studio, who specialise in helping small and medium-sized businesses reach existing and new customers through a variety of avenues such as web design, branding, print, signage and search engine optimisation. They are a local design team who love to have their clients pop in for a coffee. The studio consists of studio manager and designer Lauren, web & graphic designer Emma, and business development manager, Rowena. Nettl is part of the UK and Europe’s largest network of local web, design & print studios. With a local standing and a global backing, the team at Nettl work consultatively with their clients to grow their businesses through marketing.
When it became clear that things were not going to be normal for a while, Lauren and her team started to reach out to their clients to check in on them, make sure they were okay and ask if they had thought of a way to adapt their own businesses for the changing climate and markets. They assisted a few with their communication to their clients and helped more upgrade their online presence and make sure they could function in a contactless and digital world.
Very quickly they began to see how much of an uphill battle is was for their clients to get the word out, to both their existing and prospective clients about the shift in their business.
We’re all usually working for new clients and business, but now everyone had the task of that added layer of communication to announce a change in how they operate.
The team were spurred to adapt as they found themselves in the unique position of having an overview of how businesses were changing the way they operate in a lot of different sectors, as well as being a web design company, who had the means and skills to do something about getting the word out.
This is where Support Dublin comes in, a website where members of the community could come to view any updates their favourite local businesses had to share. There were restaurants moving to take-away, favourite boutiques suddenly selling online, beauty salons offering vouchers for when they’re back, and sometimes even just a request to leave a review if someone had been happy at that business before. Commuters can also donate the cost of their commute to the charities listed on the site.
It is completely free to register you local business on the website, simply fill out the online form and Lauren and her team will do the rest.
Lauren comments,
We wanted the community to be able to support their favourite establishments, as well as be inspired by new finds that will create long-lasting relationships on the other side.
We shared this idea with other Nettl studios around the world, and many communities now have this central gathering place for businesses and residents of their specific communities. We are banding together to find a silver lining in all of the obstacles we’re facing.
Lauren’s tip to other business owners surviving lockdown is
The best advice I can give is to be agile and keep an open mind. When you don’t focus on all of the obstacles, and rather have an infinite mindset, the opportunities of getting to know people and forming strong and personal relationships really begin to show themselves.
