Celebrating Black-Owned Businesses in Chatham-Kent
Chatham-Kent (CK) is steeped in Black History. CK’s Black community has been prevalent since the days of Emancipation, being the terminus of the Underground Railroad and having Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Buxton Historical Site as focal points of our tourism offerings.
During Black History Month, Chatham-Kent Economic Development and the CK Small Business Centre wanted to highlight the contributions, efforts and successes of our local Black-owned businesses.
Throughout the month, we engaged the Black-owned business community and featured seven local small Black-owned businesses from around our Municipality in the campaign, all of whom are making a positive impact on the community and the customers and clients they serve.
The overall campaign goal was threefold: First, to spotlight the fantastic work and successes of Black-owned businesses in our community. Secondly, we wanted to elevate awareness of Black-owned businesses culture in our community. And third, we wanted to drive traffic to the CK Small Business Centre website and socials.
This short campaign contained the following elements:
- Seven social posts – image-based posts, professionally photographed, profiling the businesses and their contributions to, and successes in, CK.
- A print advertisement placed in all local print media outlets (distribution of 94,000 residents) and featured a call to action for those wanting help starting a business to get in touch with the CK Small Business Centre as well as a QR code linking directly to our website. This QR code was tracked and garnered 972 scans on a 94k distribution.
- A video, released on our socials, which featured all of the seven businesses and a call to action for those wanting help starting a business to get in touch with the CK Small Business Centre.
In total, the digital aspect of this campaign generated 90,383 impressions, a reach of 67,991 and 12,641 engagements.
With an engagement rare of 19%, this campaign resonated well with the residents of Chatham-Kent. We saw many comments of support, and most posts had over 50 shares each.
The print portion was distributed to 94,000 CK residents and our tracking QR code generated 972 scans driving traffic to InvestCK.ca.
Our Google Analytics stated that our campaign drove 14,874 to our InvestCK.ca site during this campaign.
We undoubtedly achieved our campaign goals by generating great community feedback, awareness, and engagement throughout the short campaign, backed by respectable analytics and helping further the messaging of support for Black-owned businesses. We wholeheartedly considered this campaign to be a success, as did the businesses who took part.
