To BID Levy Paying Businesses,
Well Known Town
Changing perceptions of the town and promoting Bognor Regis as a great seaside destination are top priorities for levy paying businesses, so we’re delighted to announce the relaunch of “Love Bognor Regis”, the popular tourism website for the area.
After an approach from its then owners, the BID purchased the LBR site back in December 2021, taking on full responsibility for its development and delivery in April of this year. When the opportunity was first presented, the BID Board of Directors agreed that purchasing the site and taking delivery in-house represented a great investment for levy paying businesses. The site was already established, had great SEO, had a strong brand reputation for positive promotion of the town, was populated with interesting and relevant content, and the previous owners had built up a huge, committed following on social media.
Rebranding and streamlining the previous site
Since April, the BID Team has been working with developers to completely rebrand the site in line with the town values and associated visuals, and it now has a fresh, clean and colourful new look. All existing site content has been checked and, where necessary, updated, and the site features consistent professional photography throughout. The BID Team secured external grants and service level agreements to part fund the development of the site – these figures will be reported in the annual accounts.
Promoting the Town
Delivering the site and its associated social media channels is a proactive way for the BID to promote the town to visitors 365 days of the year. With regular updates and local guides appealing to visitors, the aim is to increase footfall to the BID Area by attracting more visitors and – hopefully – changing perceptions of the town.
Benefits for your business
At present, the Love Bognor Regis Facebook page has a reach of around 19,000 people. The Instagram channel has a following of around 7,000 people. This makes it a fantastic vehicle to promote businesses to a wider audience, by driving people to the site where they’ll see individual listings that appear in carousels under relevant guides and pages, and showcasing the offer in guides.
The Love Bognor Regis site promotes the “shop local” message, and the previous work on Bognor Regis Independents (BRINDIES) will now continue as “Indie Heroes” Guides.
All up-to-date levy paying businesses will benefit from a listing on the site at no additional charge. Non levy paying businesses within the BID Area will be charged £120 per annum to be listed. A key aim is to present a high quality, professional site that appeals to visitors, that isn't overtly commercialised. As such, the site will not offer banner promotion or ads from other sites like Google or Amazon.
The BID has secured a Service Level Agreement to deliver tourism promotion services for Bognor Regis. This external funding stipulates that the site must promote the wider Bognor Regis area, not just the BID Area. Businesses from outside of the BID Area are welcome to have a listing, and will be charged at the rate shown above.
What’s changed?
The primary aim of the Love Bognor Regis site is to attract visitors, so we’re keeping really focused on that audience. We’ve stripped back some of the more “community” focused content and pages, such as the jobs board and listings about schools. We’ll also be closing the Love Bognor Regis Community group on Facebook – this is because we simply don’t have the capacity to administer the group 24/7.
A small “please bear with us request”:
Go live glitches
Transforming the site has taken an enormous amount of work to get to this stage, and we’ve gone live now in order to start promoting Christmas. There are bound to be errors and glitches we need to tweak and resolve now that it’s live. If you see an error that you’d like to bring to our attention, please drop us an email – either through the “Contact Us” form on the site itself, or by emailing info@brbid.org. We’ll work our way through your feedback as fast as we can.
Content development
We’ll also be adding and developing pages over time, so what you see now isn’t fixed in stone forever – websites grow and evolve, and this one is going to get better and better over time.
We want to work with local experts – like the clubs and groups that visitors will be interested in, the local fishermen, the local diving, environmental, history, arts, angling and watersports groups that have all the best insider knowledge and top tips to build up an amazing resource for Bognor Regis. This isn’t going to happen overnight.
Business listings
We’re also going through every single business listing that was on the site when we took it on, crosschecking details, links to your websites or Facebook groups and, in 99.99% of cases so far, completely rewriting the text so it’s a consistent style and length. You’ll notice that bespoke “holding” graphics have been designed where there was no image for some businesses
As BID Co-Ordinator I had to make a call as to what was achievable for our small team to deliver in time for the pre-Christmas launch date, and I prioritised those sectors most likely to appeal to visitors. As we go forwards, we’ll be developing pages that naturally bring in opportunities to promote local services, like Estate Agents and Recruitment Agencies, where we talk about Bognor Regis as a great place to live, work and study.
Over time, we want to upgrade all listings, and we’re going to need your help to do this. We’ll be in touch in the new year with details as to what you could send to help make your listing pop!
Impact of BID Ballot, February 2022
There’s no avoiding the elephant in the room so, this is what will happen as a result of the BID Ballot on 14th February 2023:
In the event of a YES vote, the BID Team will crack on with delivery of this fantastic, high quality, non -commercialised tourism site for Bognor Regis, exactly as described above, for the next five years, building up amazing content and showcasing our brilliant businesses
In the event of a NO vote, the BID will have to start looking for a purchaser for the site as soon as the outcome of the vote is known, and it’ll be up to whoever purchases it to set the quality standards, determine rates for charging and content going forwards
Kindest regards, Heather
Heather Allen Co-Ordinator Bognor Regis Business Improvement District www.brbid.org Tel: 07917 692690