At Verdin Marketing, we’re proud to be a part of the small business scene in many of the communities we serve, including our hometown of San Luis Obispo, California. We know firsthand how important local businesses are to the community. We also intimately understand the challenges small businesses can face, such as lack of visibility and resources. This is especially evident with the ever-growing market of online shopping.
This past year, we worked with the City of San Luis Obispo and the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce to help them market their groundbreaking Buy Local Bonus program. In its fourth year, the program incentivized spending locally during the holiday season by rewarding shoppers with a gift card from a local business when they spent $100 or more on retail purchases at any SLO business.
The novel concept ended up being a real hit with local shoppers, and we’re so happy with how our marketing approach turned out. Our creative and content teams tackled the challenge of turning this logistically tricky idea into stylish graphics anyone could understand. Verdin used the graphics in ads and on social media, and our team also did extensive PR outreach efforts to local news media, explaining the details of the campaign, how people could qualify and collect their gift cards, and announcing when it eventually sold out (yay!).
A lot of factors came together to drive this program:
- Consistent posting, advertising and public relations ahead of and throughout the busy holiday shopping season.
- Participation and promotion efforts by many local partner businesses.
- A 12-day free parking program that happened downtown at the same time.
- A strong public sentiment in recent years for “shopping small.”
In just under a month, over 8,000 receipts were turned into the Chamber of Commerce as proof of over $100 spent by each person at a local business. The Buy Local Bonus program channeled an impressive $943,547 directly into the local economy in the 2023 holiday season.
Our campaign not only helped to bring in revenue to the businesses that are the heart of SLO, but also inspired pride in being part of the SLO community and kickstarted continued support of these businesses. Here’s to another successful Buy Local Bonus campaign this upcoming November!