Shop Small for the Holidays Campaign
I leveraged a multi-channel, multi-media, paid and organic approach to encourage local shoppers to patronize Downtown Harrisonburg businesses for the holidays in Fall and Winter of 2019.
Holiday Gift Guide
As part of this campaign, I produced and promoted a Holiday Gift Guide featuring entries from several Downtown businesses. I project managed the creation and assembly of the content, with photography provided by a local photographer and descriptions written by the businesses themselves. Once the content had been produced, I assembled it into an eight-page booklet based on a template provided by an external designer and edited all content for consistency and printability. You can view a PDF version of the guide here.
The gift guide was printed as a physical insert in the Saturday, November 23rd edition of the Daily News Record, for a total circulation of 22,000. An additional 200 copies of the physical insert were distributed in person at our Cookie Tour event.
The guide was also published on a landing page and promoted via our organic social media and email channels, a press release, and a paid Facebook and Instagram campaign. For the paid campaign, I utilized Facebook's dynamic creative option to optimize the copy and visuals for the highest possible engagement. I created several video asset selections using the photography from the gift guide. The landing page was visited 2,587 times as a result of my promotions.
Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is a nationally-recognized shopping holiday, held on the Saturday after Black Friday. Seeing as the weekend after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, I leveraged Small Business Saturday to encourage shoppers to come Downtown for their holiday shopping.
For Holiday Gift Guide ads that ran before or on 11/30, I created copy options that mentioned and generated awareness of Small Business Saturday and the impact of shopping small.
I utilized a Facebook event to raise awareness in the community of Small Business Saturday, allowing users to mark themselves as "interested" and receive reminders and updates ahead of the day itself. I promoted the event both organically on social and email as well as "boosting" it for additional reach. The event received 982 RSVPs.
I reached out to Downtown businesses to collect information on their Small Business Saturday and Black Friday sales and promotions, and compiled them into a comprehensive blog post. I promoted the post via email and social throughout November. The blog post was viewed 925 times.
Additionally, I crafted a Small Business Saturday press release and distributed it to over 100 local media contacts and news outlets. You can view the press release here.
Thankful Thursdays
A review-soliciting campaign had been on my to-do list for much for 2019, after hearing comments from many small business owners that they struggled with finding ways to ask for and receive positive reviews on sites such as Yelp. I decided to capitalize on the giving-back spirit so prevalent during the close of the year with a campaign called Thankful Thursdays. I created a Facebook event that "happened" each Thursday, thus creating a weekly reminder for users who RSVP. Each Thankful Thursday, community members were encouraged to leave a five-star review for a Downtown small business — whether they bought a gift there, visited for lunch, or just love having that business Downtown. Based on feedback I received at launch, I also created a blog post detailing step-by-step instructions on how to leave reviews on the most common review sites. This campaign was promoted via organic social media and email, with the Facebook event receiving 124 RSVPs.
Although I have no way of measuring if businesses enjoyed an increase of reviews during the campaign period, I received many compliments from business owners on the idea and have heard that several other Main Street organizations plan on executing similar campaigns in the coming year based on the model I created.
Winter Wonderfest and Last Call
I work closely with a local merchants group called The Friendly City Merchants throughout the year, often assisting with marketing and promotion for their events and activities. As part of our efforts to bring shoppers downtown for the holiday season, I helped The Friendly City Merchants promote their Winter Wonderfest and Last Call (late night shopping) events.
Winter Wonderfest was a day of family-friendly activities intended to get shoppers Downtown ahead of the holidays, including photos with Santa, carolers, face painting, a Cookie Tour, and more. The Merchants extended their hours and many hosted specials and promotions for the influx of shoppers that day. I created a landing page and Facebook event to help promote the day's festivities. The event was promoted in both paid and organic channels and received 3,300 RSVPs.
After Winter Wonderfest, the Merchants decided to host a late-night shopping event to capitalize on the last-minute shoppers. We moved quickly on the idea and I created a Facebook event for them, added the Merchants as co-hosts, and promoted it organically for a total of 107 RSVPs.