(WNY News Now) – The CHQ Chamber is leveraging cutting-edge technology to help small businesses in Chautauqua County thrive by gamifying local experiences and creating new avenues for customer engagement.
The mission of the CHQ Chamber is to build vital connections, provide professional resources, and champion our local businesses in Chautauqua County. To fulfill that mission, we undertake a number of projects and programs each year – all with an eye on how we work in the best interests of our local businesses.
Sometimes we try new things. Sometimes they are a huge and immediate hit – such as the ShopLocalCHQ Gift Card which has grown substantially since its launch in 2017. Sometimes new things take a little longer to work their way into general use.
This year, the CHQ Chamber sought and received a $25,000 Springboard grant to help us unveil a new-to-us platform designed to encourage people to visit local businesses. Bandwango is a cutting-edge technical system that gamifies locally produced trails, creating online passes that allow players to participate and earn points as they go. The flexibility in the system is outstanding, and it even allows for coupon creation for each local business, as well as the option for paid passes where warranted.
When we first looked at the Bandwango platform our reaction was, “How cool is that? We can use this to help drive customers to our local businesses.” There is a great deal of flexibility in the system to create different types of online game passes, and in turn, to provide some meaningful data about building traffic to local businesses over the long haul.
So far, we have tried out the platform for the Holiday Window Decorating Contest and the Westfield-Mayville Cookie Tour. In fact, we agreed to be a guinea pig for the Bandwango rollout of it’s new polling system for the Window Decorating Contest.
If there’s one common thread we have heard from many small local businesses in recent years it is how hard it is to reach customers. As an organization we are committed to both using traditional media and resources and searching for new resources to increase not just our own customer base, but to help our members build their support as well. New and innovative systems can bring new attention to the small businesses that are the fabric of our community.
We see enormous potential in the Bandwango platform and are committed to giving it a full trial over the next couple of years. We invite our local businesses to join us in this quest as we imagine new ways to build community both in person and online.
We invite your feedback. If your business took part in our first trial runs through the Holiday Window Decorating Contest, or through the Westfield-Mayville Cookie Tour, please let us know how we can improve. You can email our Director of Marketing and Communications, Sheila Webster at swebster@chqchamber.org. Thank you for your participation and your input.
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