CCDA launches new campaign

Published 5:00 pm Monday, May 20, 2019

LANETT — The Chambers County Development Authority has launched another marketing campaign to promote Chambers County to those outside of the region.

A new website — Chamberscharm.com — has been created to highlight parts of the county in hopes of getting people to move to the area or come there for recreational purposes.

“This is telling people why Chambers County is a great place to move,” said Valerie Gray, executive director of the Chambers County Development Authority.

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The website is a landing page for those wanting to find more information about the county.

It has information on real estate, recreational, healthcare, business community and education.

Gray said the authority was successful with its branding campaign, which brought forth the new county logo and “Strength Woven In” tagline seen on official county entities.

“We were very successful with the branding campaign, and we knew we were on to something,” she said. “But we were not doing a good job at selling ourselves to other people.”

She said the county was selling itself locally, but this campaign is about increasing the population and getting more people inside the county limits.

“The only way to do it is to give somebody everything they on one page,” Gray said.

She said when the population increases, there is more money being spent within the county, which in turn, allows more programs to be funded and more tax revenue for municipalities.

“Some of it is just to get people to come for a few days, spend some money, and then leave,” Gray said.

The measurements from the Chambers Strong campaign show that it brought more eyes to Chambers County.

In a report compiled by Red Sage out of Decatur, a partner of the authority, the campaign increased participation on the site by 440 people, and they were spending more than a minute longer on the page after the campaign.

“The longer somebody stays on your page or the number of clickthroughs that you get, the more likely you are to get somebody to come to your area,” Gray said.

Before this most recent campaign, which launched at the end of April, any social media post from the CCHA reached a high of 5,673.

Since the campaign, social media posts have reached 33,113, an increase of 30 percent compared to the past month.

Gray said a similar report will be completed once when this campaign ends in June.

“This will be important for our commission and mayors to show them it is not wasted money and you are actually engaging with people,” she said.