How Digital Main Street Painted a New Online Presence for Elizabeth’s Art Gallery
Elizabeth’s Art Gallery has been a staple in the Goderich, Ontario community for nearly three decades. Started by Elizabeth R. Van den Broeck when she was an art student, the store is one-of-a-kind. It displays Elizabeth's paintings, sells art supplies and merchandise of her art, and offers custom printing and framing services.
Coming into the Future Proof Program, Elizabeth wanted to gain confidence in her marketing ability. She sought ways to improve her digital presence and tell her story, while remaining true to her brand. The Transformation Team quickly got to work to address her concerns.
Elizabeth struggled with maintaining a social media presence for the gallery. The team started by auditing her social media channels to identify opportunities and areas of improvement. Elizabeth was then supplied with guides highlighting best practices for each social network she used. As well, the team identified social media management platforms to help her schedule content and improve posting consistency. Using these guides as a framework, Elizabeth jumped into experimenting with her content to see what worked best.
Elizabeth also looked to improve the tools she used for customer relationship management and email marketing. The team researched and identified suitable software to help her track and communicate with customers. To promote her online store — a necessity in the pandemic — the digital marketer rolled out a Facebook Ad campaign. These advertisements proved to be successful in attracting new customers to her website and generating sales.
The gallery has a modern and user-friendly website from previously going through the Digital Main Street ShopHERE program. However, Elizabeth needed help with content creation for her website. To relaunch the blog section of her website, the copywriter provided a guide with writing tips and article ideas. The UX/UI designer added the gallery’s Instagram feed to the home page of her website to show off Elizabeth’s new engaging posts. To improve her brand consistency, Elizabeth collaborated with the team’s graphic designer to create a new logo for the gallery. She received a brand guide to assist her in designing graphic materials in the future.
Thanks to the Transformation Team, Elizabeth learned sustainable ways to market her art gallery. Because she is hands-on and eager to learn, the team ensured Elizabeth had tools that allowed her to be in control of her online presence. Using these resources, Elizabeth’s Art Gallery will surely remain a force to be reckoned with in the Canadian art space.
Our Digital Main Street innovation partner in this region is TechAlliance. See how they can help.
Written by Heather Scott
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
A $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19 in Southern Ontario.
