The York County Economic Development Authority voted at its meeting last week to approve $9,100 in funding for a marketing campaign called “Keep it in the County” geared at promoting citizens spend their money in the county.
The crux of the campaign is a new website called keepitinyorkcounty.com which is modeled off a website from Charlottesville — all commercial businesses in the county are given a page where you can find contact information, a description of the business, links to the business’ website and, for some businesses that choose to furnish them, coupons and event listings. York officials hope the site will be online by May.
“The message is to spend your money in the county,” said Jim Noel, the director of the Office of Economic Development. “It helps keeps tax rates low and supports existing businesses.”
Businesses can upgrade their page on the website for free by contacting the Office of Economic Development. Upgrades include such things as posting coupons on the website to drive foot traffic at their businesses.
“It will be a complete database of every business in York County,” said Melissa Davidson, the senior business development representative for York County’s Office of Economic Development. “You wouldn’t believe how many don’t have a web presence at all.”
Davidson has overseen the creation of the website and is working with Charlottesville-based developer Charlottesville Media that was behind Shop Charlottesville.
“We looked into several local options, but [Charlottesville Media] really had a corner on the market because they are very specialized in doing these shop local sites,” Davidson said. “To have a local company do this from scratch would have cost way more.”
The Office of Economic Development has yet to set any benchmarks for the site. Davidson said the county has never done anything like this site before on a web-based platform, so they are not sure what to expect. The hope is traffic to the website will publicize York County businesses, leading to more spending in the county by its residents. Usage of the website will be monitored via Google Analytics.
Though the website will allow for users to email officials at the Office of Economic Development, it will not allow users to leave reviews or comments about the businesses in the database, Davidson said.
“We’ve had people in the past who have sent complaints about businesses or had an issue with a manager and weren’t able to get through to someone in the company, but they were able to get through to us and we were able to get it to the right person in that company,” Davidson explained.
To promote the new website, a billboard is planned for a major thoroughfare in the county. It’s not clear which billboard will be used. A draft document outlining the plan calls for refrigerator magnets to be sent to each household. The magnets would be packaged with other mail already scheduled to be sent. They would also be included in marketing packets that will be sent to all businesses in the county.
