Lend us your voice and take our 1Berkshire Inaugural Member Survey now!
1Berkshire is officially turning two years old in June! We are looking for feedback from members and the community to help influence our path forward. We’d love to hear from you if you’d be willing to take 5 minutes to complete a brief survey. Your input will be vital to future programs.
If you’re reading this article, we’re assuming it is because you like to geek out on strategy like we do! We are always researching ways to refine how we serve Berkshire businesses. How can 1Berkshire be and stay relevant and valuable to our members and the local economy? We know it’s something you are also thinking about so let us hear from you.
At 1Berkshire, we promote “The Berkshires” as a premier place to visit, live, and work. We have cutting-edge and relevant strategies to bring people to this area, and we have gotten really good at having a big impact with little dollars. For example, we use a marketing strategy called digital retargeting. Digital retargeting for the Berkshires means that if anyone searches for the Berkshires or anything related to the Berkshires in their browser or visits berkshires.org we are are able to track them and then feed them out an ad about visiting the Berkshires. This is just one way we are able to reach more people with fewer ad dollars.
We’ve had to develop these clever and economical strategies because of shortfalls in tourism funding from the state. As many of you have probably seen, NY State has been aggressively marketing upstate New York and attempting to divert Berkshire visitors to the Hudson Valley and other nearby areas. NY State has invested $5M alone this year to promote upstate NY, and Massachusetts has not come anywhere close to matching that. So we in the Berkshires work together and use creative, collaborative strategies to stay on visitors’ radar. Berkshires.org gets an average of 53,000 views per month, and the mailing list of 80,000 opt-in subscribers allows us to keep the Berkshires message top of mind as well (Want to learn more? Come and chat with our marketing team). But this shortfall in tourism dollars is one of the main reasons a membership model is important for 1Berkshire – we use membership dollars to create a sustainable base for continued year-round marketing and promotion efforts, and the state dollars we receive require that they are matched by private funds, so it allows us to stretch your dollars farther.
1Berkshire is also focusing on how we can help our local members promote their organizations here within the Berkshires. You might have seen that we’ve been experimenting with Facebook Live. We are going to local businesses and shooting promo videos featuring something new or interesting about each business. We’d love to hear what you think of this strategy! You can see some of these videos by visiting our 1Berkshire Facebook page or by searching #brkbizlive. We would like 1Berkshire to be known as the organization that helps generate buzz for businesses in the Berkshires, and a place where locals can learn about the great things going on with Berkshire businesses and organizations.
We are curious about how we can refine our events to make them more relevant to your business. By hearing from you, we can better understand what gatherings, programming and products would meet needs and solve problems that matter to you. Thanks in advance for your feedback on our survey!
Erika Allison, Director of Member Services