City of Ryde – Shop local, love your community
Background
The Shop Local, Love Your Community campaign was reactivated during the financial year 2020/21 due to the impact on trade that COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions were having on the local business community across the City of Ryde. In particular, the hospitality sector was hard hit, with cafes and restaurants reporting between 50-80 per cent decrease in patronage.
Council delivered a range of capacity building programs for small businesses. The community had previously indicated a desire to support local businesses and the campaign provided insights and tips on the best way they could do so.
Implementation
Council partnered with local business chambers, local media, and Council’s Communication and Media Team, to reactivate the ‘Shop Local, Love Your Community’ campaign alongside the roll out of the NSW Government’s Dine & Discover Voucher program in March 2021.
Business chamber and local media representatives and Councillors visited local businesses to generate awareness and inspire community involvement in the ‘Shop Local, Love Your Community’ campaign when using the Dine & Discover Voucher Scheme.
Local media frequently wrote about Shop Local, Love Your Community and offered special advertising rates for businesses promoting their acceptance of Dine & Discover Vouchers.
Service NSW played an integral role by assisting local businesses through the Dine & Discover Voucher onboarding process.
Outputs
A series of marketing collateral was developed to support the campaign including:
- Postcards - highlighting community reasons to shop local
- Posters - for the shop owners to display in shop windows
- Council street banners - promoting the campaign across the West Ryde Town Centre
- Six-week editorial and advertorial campaign in the local paper
- Social Media sponsored campaign.
Outcomes and results
The role of local businesses was highlighted with Council raising awareness of the importance they play in creating great neighbourhoods, suburbs and centres. Businesses also learnt of different methods they could interact with, pivot and engage with prospective and existing customers.
Other benefits of the campaign included leveraging the NSW Government Dine & Discover Voucher Scheme to promote council support for business and drive engagement with the local business community in a time of need. Through the campaign, local consumers were encouraged to spend their Dine & Discover Vouchers to support local businesses. The Shop Local, Love Your Community campaign facilitate
Councillor visits to businesses to raise awareness of available support.
The campaign delivered clear messaging and built a sense of community by promoting ways that local business and consumers can work together for positive outcomes.
Costs and funding
The project had an overall spend of $5,500 covering all marketing collateral, advertorials, banners, postcards, and posters. Funding was sourced from the existing Economic Development budget.
Key learnings
Following the campaign, council obtained data from Service NSW on Dine & Discover Voucher redemptions. This data highlighted that suburbs in which the campaign was promoted were significant beneficiaries from the Dine & Discover program. There was an average spend of $35 on top of a single $25 Dine and Discover Voucher redeemed.
Reviewing the sponsored social media campaigns provided insights into engagement with users through views, likes and community participation. To improve engagement for future Shop Local, Love Your Community campaigns, council is considering developing a hashtag campaign for community engagement, enabling local residents to post a picture of themselves supporting a local business or giving a plug to a local business.
Other relevant information
This was a collaborative project with various stakeholders across the City of Ryde and across Council teams.
Council Details
Population size: 133,224
LGA size: 40 km2
State Electorate: Ryde
Federal Electorate: Bennelong