‘Marketing Taunton’ (business plan response)
BUSINESS PLAN SECTION: ‘marketing TAUNTON’ (page 12. £30,000/yr)
Here’s what Taunton BID are proposing, their headline ideas, and underneath collectively bullet pointed are some suggestions of what you may want to consider when analysing the ideas presented. You are of course entitled to provide your own feedback to and ask questions of any member of the Taunton BID steering group, and we encourage that.
In our consultation Marketing was important element of this BID. Taunton has to punch above it’s weight to compete for it’s market share with Exeter, Bristol, Clarks Village, out of town, online shopping and changes in shopper behavior.
Create a Taunton Brand.
Develop an effective promotional plan.
Promote the strong independent business sector.
Prioritise the use of digital marketing.
Active use of social media platforms.
Work with Local Authorities to improive way marketing.
Work with commercial property agents.
CONSIDERATIONS
Our biggest concern is BID’s ambition to create a Taunton brand. Thinking big of themselves aren’t they? Surely SWT Council are responsible for this and given our Garden Town status surely this is going to be Taunton’s brand going forwards? There’s a real danger of the BID creating a conflicting brand to that of our real long term custodians, and wasting money to do this.
Yes, all businesses need to market themselves, and Taunton as a shopping destination leveraging it’s great independents is one such great angle that could be used. It is however important to remember that throwing money at marketing to convince people to shop in person rather than online needs to be done with caution, because the High Street hasn’t yet been able to fight off such generational online shopping trends.
Ask BID if levy paying businesses will have to pay any more for advertising in the marketing material they will be publishing, because many BID’s make additional charges for BID businesses to advertise in their promotional materials. A clear yes or no answer is what you’re looking for.
We’ve had feedback from some businesses that they already spend enough money on marketing, so given the BID business plan is essentially marketing & events based (attraction initiatives, which combined is 50% of the total BID budget), some don’t feel the need to increase their marketing budget. Ultimately it should be upto a business owner to decide what to spend on, rather than be told to through a BID scheme that one simply might not see value in.
Lets remember that we have already have the publicly funded Visit Taunton with social media, a website and conventional media, as just one of several organisations and initiatives that do a great job at marketing and promoting Taunton and all it’s great town wide assets. The promoting of towns (as opposed to idnividual businesses) is the responsibility of local authorities, and there’s a danger we could be absolving responsibility for some aspects of this from SWT Council. A clear baseline agreement with SWT Council confirming what they provide for marketing Taunton now with reassurances none will be taken away is what you should expect to see from BID now, so ask to see it.
With development of our Garden Town SWT Council has already said it will be increasing marketing such as creation of a new website, and then there’s the appointment of a Garden Town project manager to help drive the project. Such fundamental change across the town and the marketing and promotion of Taunton as a Garden Town the Council will do behind it, is likely to be substantial.
With several layers of Taunton marketing already, besides each business with their own efforts, BID initiatives could easily overlap or even conflict with promoting Taunton as a whole, lets remember that only BID business offerings in the very town centre should be promoted, after all they are the ones paying for it.
BID is planning to market Taunton, but consider why just a group of 440 business be taxed for the greater good as the “saviours” for the whole of Taunton as BID have been implying throughout their YES campaign. If all this effort is for Taunton as a whole to prosper, why not BID tax all 800+ town centre businesses instead of half that number, or the SWT Council add a couple pounds to the non domestic rates bill for every Taunton Deane resident apportioning those funds for town centre investment if the survival of Taunton depends on a thriving town centre. Or the council with it’s multi-million pound economic develop fund could simply divert put just £30,000 into marketing Taunton now if it thought it would be a great investment. Any such idea seems a more equitable way for Taunton as a whole to improve itself as a town rather than tax the few?
Finally, yes businesses play a key role in marketing themselves, but lets remember that the managing and promoting of towns should ultimately be done at the local authority level, and even our own SWT Economic portfolio Councillor said that. SWT have the money, resources and plans to continue this as part of their economic development funding and initiatives, and the signs of this with the new LibDem administration are strong.
Budget CONSIDERATIONs: £30,000
Hard for us to analyse whether this is a realistic figure, really does depend on what BID’s planned and costed marketing initiatives they’ve come up with are. Suggest you ask them for the detail of what will be done and approx how much each initiative will cost, a Steering Group with good BID business plan will know this. Appreciate there will always be some estimating going on for each idea through adding up the approx costs for each sub-component, but one doesn’t want to be left thinking the total amount number has been “plucked from the air”. If marketing Taunton to bring footfall is as important as BID have always been selling, we do have slight reservations whether this number is big enough.
Here are more of our business plan response articles for you to read.
Click on image to download our 8 page PDF booklet (opens in a new window).