Brick Works Academy Brings Camp Home Virtually
As we inch closer to being able to go back to some sense of normal life, one of the most considerable losses for many kids has been summer camp. Making new friends, learning new skills and loving every second of it is what camp is really about. While COVID-19 reduces in-person camps, kids can still create memories online with Brick Works.
Brick Works Academy is a Canadian family-owned business founded in 2012 by David Goodfellow. He created the company because he felt that after his daughter and her friend showed interest in learning about robotics, there wasn't a place for kids to explore a more technical and geeky side of life. Since then, Brick Works has expanded to include camps around video games, robotics, photoshop, video editing, and so much more.
Since the pandemic hit, Brick Works has struggled because their primary business revolved around getting kids together in person for camps and pivoting to get virtual camps up and promoting them online has been difficult. When the Transformation Team met with Goodfellow, he said he needed help with bringing more attention to online virtual camps. Brick Work's website also needed to optimize the navigation menu to help potential customers find information on the camps more efficiently and make sign-ups easier.
Goodfellow told the team throughout the weekly meetings that he wanted to advertise more effectively through his existing ads on Google and Facebook. He also felt that LinkedIn would be a new source of potential customers because there was an opportunity to attract parents in tech jobs and encourage them to sign their kids up. The team got to work and created the following deliverables for Brick Works: social media guidebooks, a new LinkedIn account with tutorials on how to utilize it, ad campaign planners, branding kit, and social media post templates.
“We want to see our message get out to more families to join our summer camps; this is a great starting point,” David Goodfellow said.
The team also took a look at Brick Work's website. While the site itself was in good standing, it was a bit low on Google when searching for topics relevant to Brick Works' experiences for kids. The team wanted to improve the SEO on the site while making a few visual and navigational changes. They set up a blog with helpful information for parents, cleaned up the navigation dropdown menus and optimized the pages to contain keywords relevant to Brick Works space.
“Getting an upgrade in our social media presence and general SEO optimization were the two areas we were most interested in getting support with, but everything else was a big boost,” Goodfellow said. “I would say most small businesses should look at getting this help, even if they have an online presence. It's great to have a fresh set of eyes, take a look at what you're doing and see if any improvements can be implemented to enhance what you are already doing,” he added.
Our Digital Main Street Future Proof partner in Waterloo Region is Communitech. See how they can help.
Written by Kyle Hooper
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.
