03/24 COVID-19 Update for Small Businesses

3/24/20 Update: USA Today just launched an online small business support directory that allows users to support local businesses by purchasing gift cards. Users and businesses alike can add businesses to the directory.

Cities and states from all of the U.S. are currently represented, and there is no limit to which industries can be included.

Adding your business is easy. All you need is:

• A Google My Business listing — the system uses Google to find and list your business, as well as provide information regarding your business type
• A webpage that allows people to purchase gift cards electronically

Check out the Support Local website here. We’ve added a few businesses ourselves while writing this, and while they haven’t shown up yet, the process is very easy.

If your website doesn’t currently support e-gift card purchases, there are a number of electronic gift card processing companies that will handle this transaction for you and pass the money on to you.

Here are few we’ve heard of (but we don’t have any direct relationship or knowledge of their products and how good they are):

• Toast
• Giftfly.com
• Giftly.com (slightly different spelling)
• Yiftee

This article dissects and ranks a few of these services on your behalf.

Before you start:

Please note that the Support Local website will pull data directly from your Google My Business Listing in order to inform users and visitors about your location and your business type. So, it’s important that you ensure your listing it up to date before adding your business.

If you haven’t created a Google My Business page we can certainly do that for you at no charge. Contact us here.

Don’t forget:

Once your virtual gift cards are set up, share the link with everyone in your customer database. These are the people who already know you and are most likely to buy gift cards and support your business right now!

3/24/20 Update: We’ve loving this short, one-and-half-minute video, which highlights the good things people and businesses are doing to come together and offer support.

Now is the time to support each other and remember that we’re all in this together — and we’ll get through it together.

Tony & Yolanda

Here at Maximize Printing, we are committed to staying open, serving small businesses and delivering all current, future and in-process orders and direct mail campaigns without halt despite COVID-19.