Business Forum: The Big Picture on Small Town Marketing

Doreen Sullivan

"My best advice for small town tourism is never let your fountain run dry."

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There is certainly a celebrated character and comfort to living in a small town. I know of what I speak. I lived in Prosperity, South Carolina (pop. 1,000), for 12 years. Fresh out of New York City, it was an adjustment to live in a place where the tiny sidewalks rolled up before 9 p.m.

While urban areas continue to expand and gobble up surrounding communities, there are fortunately still rural spots that remain untouched and laid back. After I shed my hyped-up big city expectations, I noticed how the quaint life had an appeal all its own.

I brought a business with me to Prosperity, my entertainment marketing agency, Post No Bills. While Post No Bills is now located in Columbia, arguably a city with its own hometown appeal, I have had the opportunity to travel around the state to bergs like Newberry, Barnwell, Seneca, Beaufort, and Anderson. I was invited to these places to speak about drawing visitors to their locations. Sometimes I was asked to assess the town’s challenges to business growth and development.

After all, if I could develop a nationally recognized business in Prosperity, then surely I know that it matters less where a company is located than how it presents itself. What I’ve discovered through my experience with small South Carolina towns is that while a town’s tourism and business growth is certainly based on external image and presentation, many times success is also about how a community views itself.

Each town is unique, so when approaching an assessment I drive around with town leaders, ask questions about their cultural and natural amenities, get a feel for the town’s vibe, and immerse myself in its atmosphere. I look for the town’s unique angle, biggest selling point, most appealing attraction. I hope to help leaders think of their towns not from the perspective of a resident, but from the perspective of a visitor or a business owner looking for a location.

In 2007, I was asked to visit Walterboro to assess their position within South Carolina’s tourism brand. The town leaders wanted a marketing plan that would both draw visitors off of I-95 and also capitalize on their close proximity to Charleston, the state’s top tourist destination. Walterboro had a number of hot spots to be incorporated into their marketing plan, including promoting the new visitors center, drawing visitors downtown to an antique shopping area, and supporting the town’s remodeled farmer’s market.

Walterboro was opening their first visitors center, and leaders had already developed a top-notch slogan: Walterboro: The Front Porch of the Lowcountry. This slogan was to be supported by what the town dubbed "the red rocker campaign" where rockers were sprinkled about the county at tourism-related locations.

The creative team at Post No Bills developed a trio of logos that tied Walterboro’s three attractions—the visitors center, antique district, and farmer’s market—together so that there was cross-marketing and consistency of image. While PNB fully developed a red rocker logo, there was also a red Lowcountry flower for the antique area and a red tractor for the farmers market.

The flower for the antique district sprang from the "pass-along garden" that grows outside of the downtown Artisans Center, South Carolina’s home for handcrafted art. Pass-along gardens are a Southern tradition where plant cuttings from one person’s garden are passed along to friends and family. This was a unique angle on which to hinge the overall marketing campaign.

Seed packets were created with the antique district flower logo to "pass along" a little bit of Walterboro’s beauty for visitors to take home. Supported by interstate outdoor advertising and distributed at the welcome center, the packets were intended to raise awareness of the downtown antique district.

In addition, the seed packets incorporated the idea involving the Walterboro community participating in the image and marketing of their town. The plan was to offer free seed packets and plants once a month to local citizens at the farmer’s market. This incentive would draw local business to the market and provide a way to improve the overall atmosphere of the community when these free seeds and plants were grown outside of homes and businesses.

The plan was for Walterboro to eventually bloom into the garden town of the Lowcountry in addition to being its front porch.

While this was a short-term marketing plan that launched the three areas of town on which Walterboro wanted to focus, it was not the total package that would make tourism and business development a success for years to come. Often rural areas believe that luring tourists will bring in dollars and thus spur much-needed growth that will reinvigorate a town.

This is putting the cart before the horse. In any town there are challenges to overcome before serious growth can take place. Most small towns lack the infrastructure to handle massive tourism. There must be both low- and high-end restaurants, adequate bathroom facilities, lighting, directional support, and parking for both cars and buses. All tourism locations should be well described in support materials, and tourist attractions must be open at least during regular business hours. Under no circumstances should a location be presented as a tourist attraction if it is not open to the public.

Often towns need a little sprucing up before the real beauty of a place can shine. A fresh coat of paint can do wonders for atmosphere. It was suggested that Walterboro carry the red rocker theme into the antique district, lining the downtown with pots of scarlet flowers and taking advantage of a wonderful, but empty, vest pocket park with a fountain for outdoor dining and local musical entertainment. It was also suggested that the water tower at the end of the main shopping district would set a happy tone if painted white with the antique district red flower logo.

Empty storefronts should no longer be viewed as a drawback, but as opportunities to present local artistic talent, or perhaps displays about the town’s history. Every little thing must be considered as adding to the larger picture of what makes a place attractive enough for tourists to visit more than once.

I believe in a creative, but realistic approach to small town marketing. I once visited a town that had paid a consultant tens of thousands of dollars to come to the conclusion that parking was an issue. The consultant suggested that the town do away with the unused, but beautiful, round-about central fountain in favor of more parking spaces. While I didn’t view parking as an issue in a town with few visitors, I did see a problem with knocking down an amenity that made the town unique.

I asked the leaders that day why the fountain was dry. To me, the fountain should be a happy focal point of town, a place where people can gather. Wouldn’t it be nice to have people say, "Meet me at the fountain!" Changing a traffic light or a few parking spaces isn’t an answer to the problem of sagging tourism.

Often money is wasted on this sort of thing. With limited funds small towns need to be creative in their approach to marketing. They need to think like a visitor, find the thing that makes their town exceptional or at least different.

Marketing is expensive, so it is necessary to plan for paid media such as print advertising, outdoor billboards, Internet presence, direct mail, database management, and printed support materials. But a truly powerful campaign should provide a large portion of the initial budget for creative efforts. Great creativity drives all successful campaigns. Lackluster creativity renders paid advertising less effective.

The basic goal of small town marketing is to try to overcome a sense that rural areas are humdrum places without personality. Why would a town invest money in paid advertising without the assurance that their message and visuals were strong enough to carry the campaign?

So, how does a small municipality find the right ad agency or marketing firm to help them reach their goals? If there isn’t a company that is an apparent good match, a town can put out a call for interested agencies and firms to present credentials such as references and portfolios. The top companies can then be asked to make formal presentations.

Note that any idea presented in a "pitch" is the sole property of the presenting firm and not to be used without payment, no matter how appealing the idea may be. Even if an idea is presented in a casual situation, it is best to go through proper channels to secure the right to use the creative ideas of others.

Town and county councils, mayors, chambers of commerce, and local businesses should collectively focus on the big picture. Rural areas should be their own biggest fans and proudly share this enthusiasm with the world. My best advice for small town tourism is never let your fountain run dry. ¨