Virginia Tourism Corporation Grant Program

my name is Sheila lamb and I'm with the Virginia sbdc Network for those of you that are not familiar with our organization the Virginia Small Business Development Center is a partnership program between the US small business administration George Mason University and Local Host institutions throughout Virginia with 26 locations sorry with 26 locations across the Commonwealth we provide training and technical assistance to small businesses in their local communities our one-on-one advising services are available at no charge today's webinar of Virginia tourism Corporation grant program is presented by the Virginia sbdc Network in collaboration with the Virginia tourism Corporation Grant team we are recording today's presentation and it will be posted on our website Virginia sbc.org due to the large number of participants everyone's microphone is muted and the chat function is turned off but if you have questions during the presentation you can type those into the Q&A box um those will be answered while we go and then at the end we'll do some questions out loud um we have also enabled the live transcript function which you can show or hide via your own meeting controls and now it is my pleasure to introduce our speaker for today's session Stacy Martin Stacy is the Virginia tourism corporation's Grant director and has been with BTC for nine years she has over 20 years of experience in state government having previously worked at Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Capital Area Workforce investment board Stacy is also adjunct faculty at Old Dominion University teaching in both the English Department and in parks recreation and tourism studies assisting Stacy today are Noah Salah Aden and Caleb leech Noah is the grant specialist for VTC he manages the reimbursement processes for all grants Caleb is the grants coordinator for BTC he manages final reporting structures both of them are looking forward to answering your questions in this webinar thank you Caleb and Noah and now please join me in welcoming our speaker for today Stacy Martin thank you Sheila we appreciate that and thank you all for attending our webinar um this is our webinar about our micro business marketing leverage program um this presentation will solely be about that program we have some additional programs we may do some webinars with sbdc on those programs throughout the next 12 months or so so we're so glad you could join us today um like we said though uh Noah and Caleb will answer questions in the Q&A box and then if there are any questions um left at the end uh Sheila will read those out to me or we can um take questions from folks in attendance so this uh webinar is also posted online on vc.org grants you can take a look at the slide deck um and notes if you need to refer back to those if you're going to apply so VTC off offers five different Grant programs like I said this is our micro business marketing leverage program we also have a special events and festivals program uh a marketing leverage program called va250 which is related to America's 250th that commemoration is 2026 to 2031 we're providing some runway for eligible applicants to prepare for that commemoration we have our traditional marketing leverage program and then our set aside round for Destination marketing offices but this one is partic of particular interest the business marketing leverage program for those of you that own small businesses with less than 20 full-time employees and your business is tourism oriented so what does it mean to be tourism oriented it means that you have a unique visitor experience at your location you might be Boutique retail you might be a BNB uh lodging partner restaurant food truck um we do have some exceptions to our eligibility so if you have more than 20 full-time employees you have 21 or more you're not eligible for this program but you are for our larger marketing leverage program we also only allow personal Wellness businesses like yoga studios nail salons hair salons massage Studios to apply if they are located inside a lodging Resort like primin salamander um Cavalier here in Virginia Beach so if you're in that business sector you're not eligible to apply unless you are inside one of those lodging Partners so over the past year we decided to take a really close look at our grants if you've applied in the past it is substantially different this time so I'd like to real quickly go over some of the changes that you might see we've streamlined our application and reduced the number of questions we've gone down to three sections from six now there's a goal section A Research section and a marketing section and so you'll need to set some goals with these marketing dollars back up those goals with research and then build out a marketing plan based on that research so you can achieve those goals we also adjusted the program so 75% of your award must be spent attracting visitors from at least 50 miles away we really want to get that out of region and out of state personing coming into Virginia and hopefully spending a night or two our whole goal is to get folks to spend more and stay longer we took a close look at our eligible marketing items we paired that down a little bit we revised our scoring took our terms and conditions down from 16-page document to about eight or nine and we did character limits on our questions this time so if it looks different it's supposed to look different if you applied before it is substantially different and we'll go through some of the things that you need to keep up with um as you apply so we did change um the timing of when we opened this program in the past it was September we moved it up to July with a closing on August 22nd so we could have more time to score and so you would know before you started that Marketing in September that you would know you got funded so it's always going to be Midsummer going forward um the goal of this whole program is to push money out into the tourism marketing ecosystem to get folks to come during the off seon so marketing um using your Grant award needs to be marketing that's really driving visitation from September 2024 to May 2025 there is a small look back period if you've already started spending money promoting your fall tours or or winter events that you'd be able to submit those for reimbursement but the real goal here is let's get folks out and traveling on those long federal holiday weekends on those teacher workday School holiday weekends fall break spring break winter break uh FKS coming out for football games and tailgating really think through how you can piggyback on some of the other things folks are doing in that offseason travel season so this does require our normal Hub and spoke partnership so what that means is you really kind of have to build on an itinerary let's say your business is at the center right you want people to come to your boutique retail Center where else can they go while they're on vacation uh where are they going to stay where are they going to eat where are they going to get breakfast where are they going to buy some you know supplies they might need during their trip so think through unique places where people are going to go and spend money in the community and in the destination so some folks are wondering like what's marketing leverage mean uh marketing leverage means that we want to match our public dollars with your private dollars that means what we want to do is we want to really increase the amount of money going out into that tourism marketing ecosystem to get folks to spend more and stay longer we really really want to focus on outof state visitation um right now we're at about 90 million uh per day in visitor spending and we really really need to get up to a 100 million per day to stay competitive with North Carolina and Tennessee so part of that is pushing out this grant money matching it with your grant money and really getting the word out that there is stuff to do in Virginia all year long now this grant does require match um it can be cash or in kind so cash match is money that you're spending on paid advertising let's say you're putting an ad in the Washington Post and you've already done that um you've got the Virginia is for loow Lovers logo on there you can count that as a match now earned or owned media can count as in-kind match and what that means is your number of your Facebook followers we're going to allow you to count that as match the number of your Instagram followers um any sort of earned Media or editorial that you've gotten so let's say you've got a you got a a full page article in Southern Living about your business recently we're going to allow you to count that as match in the program application instructions are specific ways where you can value that earned and owned media so you might already have enough match to apply for this program based on the number of your social media followers or based on some editorial that you've gotten the number one thing you should be doing as a business owner is setting up Google Alerts Google Alerts are free um I'm old enough to remember PR clipping services where all the newspapers from around the country would go into one Ad Agency and they have an army of folks cutting out uh editorial that folks got so what you want to do is set up Google alerts for your business name your destination uh your locality and Google will email you every time that shows up out in the web and that way you can keep track of the editorial that you've earned now these are all reimbursement programs BTC has to be good stewards of these tourism tax dollars so we don't send you any money UPF front what you have to do is you spend the award down and then you submit to us proof that you place these ads proof that you use the Virginia for lovers logo link or hashtag um proof of the actual advertising and proof of payment you send that all to us with a reimbursement form we review it all made sure you met you met the requirements of the marketing program and the terms and conditions and then we pay you back for those dollars now we do understand with small businesses cash flow can be challenging so you don't have to wait until youve spent your full $5,000 to request reimbursement you can do that 500 ,000 $1,500 at a time depending on what you need now the whole goal of this program is that your marketing initiative will carry that Virginia is for Lovers brand right in a way you act as our marketing agency while you're marketing your business your event and the things you have going on so we want to see you use that Virginia is for Lovers logo hashtag and Link in your marketing whether it's on social media or on the radio so we often get questions on how do I get Virginia's for lovers words on the radio in my radio ad oh we hear a lot of people say things like hey everybody knows Virginia is for Lovers and you're going to love our sale or you're going to love our event so think through how you get those words into any audio narrative that you're doing be it a radio ad an influencers podcast or something like that and there's really detailed instructions in the Grant application form on how to activate the Virginia is for Lovers brand in your marketing campaign so for this round we have about a half a million dollars to Grant out Grant awards are between 5,000 and 10,000 small tourism Orient Ed businesses can apply for the $5,000 tier our destination marketing offices main streets or downtown business associations that are collectively marketing several small businesses can apply at the $10,000 tier we think that we can fund about 60 proposals this is fewer than in the past um we do need to reserve part of the funding available for this program for the larger marketing leverage Ground Round in February the goal of this whole program and I can't this enough is to increase out of region in overnight travel during the off seon we start reviewing Awards on August 23rd and we believe we can notify folks of their award sometime in Octo October probably mid to late October so some of the ways to think about marketing offseason visitation um think about how you can do holiday shopping initiatives shop local initiatives shop American initiatives think about restaurant weeks if you're a restaurant owner can you get a whole bunch of restaurants partnering together and launching a restaurant Week on main street or in your downtown um does your community have anything going on with Winter Wonderland or Holiday Lights how can you piggyback on that marketing so think about some of the long weekends um that state and federal employees get how can you Market to those employees and Richmond Hampton Roads and Washington DC they often have ample leave time take those long weekends to travel so maybe you want to Target your social media marketing a few weeks before that long weekend travel so you can read through this list on your own just some ideas on what might motivate people to travel certain times of year so those that are new to tourism marketing are probably curious on how does this work uh what actually is a DMO so a DMO DMO stands for Destination marketing organization or destination management office some dmos specialize in only marketing for a region some dmos have the management piece and they're also taking a look at Economic Development so it's a whole ecosystem at the top we've got brand USA those are the folks that market travel to the United States outside of the United States we don't see their ads here because we're already here but they're Marketing in all different countries I believe they are in 57 different languages their job is really to bring in international inbound visitation so then we also have uh excuse me then we have Regional dmos these are multi-state Partnerships so we belong to Capitol region USA that's a partnership between Virginia Maryland and Washington DC we all work collectively collectively together to bring folks into this Mid-Atlantic region then you've got us Virginia as for lovers also known as Virginia tourism Corporation or Virginia tourism Authority our job is to bring people to Virginia and then you've got your local DMO your Main Street organizations your event producers and you as business owners your job is to bring people into your town onto your main street and Crossing that threshold of your business so really take a look at what these other entities are doing in terms of Tourism marketing uh at Virginia is for Lovers we'll be releasing our national campaign shortly it is called vacation starts with VA um you can take a look at some of the marketing collateral that we already have on online think about how you might be able to piggyback on some of that marketing later this year we are going to announce some additional ways to PB back on that national campaign so one thing you need to think about with tourism marketing is is layering everything together so if you don't have a rap card in the state welcome centers you really need to do one grant money can be used for the design Printing and distribution of those rra cards um we also manage the rap card distribution at the safety rest areas as well it's only $120 a year to have a rat card pocket in a Welcome Center so it's something you might want to think about in terms of where's your nearest Welcome Center where are the crossroads where people are coming from so for instance if you're a Hampton Roads business perhaps you want to be in the New Kent welcome center and then also the Welcome Center down at bracie uh on 85 where folks come in from North Carolina we also have various co-ops where we buy down the cost of advertising and things like Travelocity or Expedia to make it more affordable for our small business partners Leisure 360 is our media partner they have buyouts available through their streaming channels and through virginia.org um take a look and see what your DMO is doing what's your Eda doing um who's doing marketing in your region and how can you layer that in with what you're doing um we want to see you carry that Virginia is for Lovers that love VA message all the way through your marketing and then you can start part of Virginia is for Lovers merchandise program with these Grant dollars so you're allowed to use 10% of your Grant award if you get one $500 if you went for a $5,000 award to start a merchandise program for your boutique retail store your Visitors Center maybe you're going to events um and you can buy those things at wholesale and sell them at retail it's a great way to come up with match money for each round going forward we do have a new merchandise company called creative color located up there in fredicksburg if you want to take advantage of this program you can set up a wholesale account through our website take a look at their pricing decide what you want to order and resell like I said only 10% of your Grant award can be used to start a merchandise program so we got a lot of questions on what do I need to do before I apply how do I get ready to apply for this program the number one thing is you're going to need to talk to your destination marketing office the tourism office in your region um I know Sheila is located up there in Northern Virginia some of you may also be located in Northern Virginia so maybe you need to talk to ladden County DMO because you're going to need to get a letter of support and you're going to need to upload that letter of support into the online portal there is information in the program application that will take you to a list of all the destination marketing offices across Virginia there's about 135 it varies by county or town and there are some Regional ones if you do find you're in one of those areas where there's really not a DMO yet that covers your community you can submit a letter from a locality leader like a town council member a town manager accounting manager the second thing you need to um take a look at is your research what is your ZIP code data telling you from your credit card reports where are people coming from take a look at your Facebook and Instagram insights who's following your page take a look at btc's research what attra traveler profiles look like for your business type what do traveler profiles look like for folks coming in to the nor Northern Virginia area or Southwest Virginia area what are the demographics of those folks what are their average incomes how long are they staying what you're going to need to do is evaluate that research you have from multiple sources and then create some goals for your program maybe you're seeing that 10% of your customers are coming from New York City that's a pretty good amount maybe now you want to start marketing to New Jersey or Philadelphia maybe you're thinking you know what maybe I can attract another 5% from New York I'm going to take these dollars and do a lot of social media advertising to get people from New York to come to my community and come shop at my store so that research is really going to drive your goals and that's going to drive your marketing plan and then um in your marketing plan part of this application you have 10 lines for each marketing plan the first marketing plan is going to be your match right that's where you going list your earned or owned or paid media and then the second marketing plan you're going to do are the things that you would like VTC to reimburse you for and that marketing plan really has to be detailed we want to see who you're marketing to what vendor you're using how much money you're allocating and your placement dates and that needs to match up with your research and your goals so for instance in one of my marketing plan line items I might say um I'm going to do social media I'm going to do Facebook meta I'm going to Target families in Charlotte North Carolina with household incomes over a 100,000 I'm going to place Those ads in November around Thanksgiving travel time and I'm going to allocate $1,000 toward those social media booths or in the second example maybe I decide I'm going to do a print ad um I'm going to place that in the Charlotte Observer I'm going to Target Charlotte North Carolina incomes over 100,000 I'm really going to focus on couples that may want to shop without their kids and I'm going to place Those ads in December at a cost of $1,000 so really think through building out a marketing plan how are you going to come up with match and then how are you going to allocate that $5,000 you're requesting from BTC who are you going to Target what are the demographics of that Target Market what's going to motivate them to travel when are you going to Target to them and how much are you going to spend so one of the reasons why we offer programs like this is we know tourism economics are really important um we know that tourism Revenue comes in and supports locality Services right and that's your occupancy tax your males tax and your sales tax we also know that you as local uh business owners you help keep profits in the local community most business owners live in or near the community in which their business is located you are the folks that sponsor the Little League team and we want to provide some support to really make that economic ecosystem even stronger with these marketing dollars we also know that tourism and and all the fun things to do in a community are what leads to traditional Economic Development so recently a couple years ago ADP the big payroll processor uh relocated to norfol Virginia now the price per square foot for a large corporate building is much higher in Norfolk than it is in some other cities across the state but ADP decided they wanted to pay pay a premium because the quality of life for their employees was better in the Hampton Roads region there was a lot more things for their employees do 15 universities within 100 miles for their children and spouses and so we we know that the more small businesses and more tourism oriented businesses we can get set up in a community the more traditional economic development is going to come to that Community we also need our dollars to leverage your dollars you match one to one with us or you go above and beyond the match that increases the amount of money out there in the tourism marketing ecosystem one of the things you should do as a small business owner is attend a DMO meeting find out what your local tourism office is doing get involved with your localities Economic Development Authority attend those public meetings uh create Partnerships with other folks so you can get a larger pool of money and maybe in February apply for one of our larger marketing grants so sometimes it can be challenging for small businesses or localities to find match for these programs uh in the 2021 special session the state passed legislation allowing localities to set up tourism investment districts uh Richmond Regional tourism was the first one to stand up a tid uh in the state and what that is it's a 2% fee on lodging in Richmond's case um and that fee then gets deposited into an account that is specifically for tourism marketing and tourism development I believe norfol and Virginia Beach are looking at the legislation there's some other communities at well as well it's a bit of a heavy lift getting businesses involved in agreeing to charge this fee um but it is a good way to come up with matching dollars for our grant programs talk to your locality uh talk to your DMO they may have a small business grant program that you can use as match to activate BTC dollars take a look at your existing marketing budget if you're already do doing some marketing add that Virginia's for lovers logo to it and then use that as match again work with other businesses in your community or on your Main Street um maybe you want to create a partnership with a lodging partner a bakery your boutique retail and one of the breweries nearby and you're going to create a coupon package or an overnight stay package try and get folks to come to your four businesses and then those organiz like some of our smaller museums that are 501 C's um what they do is they'll announce hey donors we're looking to get a grant from BTC can you help us come up with the match and they come up with their match through fundraising um that really works for our smaller museums and 501 C's so think about ways that you can raise the funds for your match through these different methods so some things to remember for our grant programs is we really look at Partnerships we want to know that you're working with other tourism oriented businesses in your region that it's going to create a really robust experience for someone to say you know what I'm going to take an extra day off work I'm GNA go for this event I'm going to leave on Thursday I'm do some shopping at these really cool Boutique retail shops in this community I'm going to go to a concert on Saturday I'm going to go have breakfast at this doughnut shop on Sunday so really think through how you're going to motivate folks to travel based on showing them there's a lot of really great stuff to do in your community the match is really critical for our programs we need to prove to um our Auditors and of course Secretary of Commerce and the governor that we are being good stewards of these public dollars and we are matching them with private dollars to increase Marketing in the region you do have to use that Virginia is for Lovers logo in all your marketing and advertising for reimbursement there's information on our website and the program instructions on how to get that logo Suite you need to agree to the particular terms and conditions on using that trademark the other thing to remember is these are reimbursement programs again you can request reimbursement as you go as you spend down your award but we do not grant money UPF front if you're interested in this program remember you have to be a tourism oriented small business with fewer than 20 full-time employees focused on marketing during the offseason September 24 to May 25 our other programs have different eligibility requirements research is critical for these programs we have got to prove a really positive economic impact you know make sure you're taking a look at what VTC has in our research Pages look at your own social media insights Your Own Credit Card reports talk to your DMO they might have research from tourism research companies like air DNA a ralist Adara um maybe even talk to your local University see if they've done any economic research in your region and can share some data with you before you even open that application portal read through all of the documents we have really clear terms and conditions review that list of eligible expenses and then read over the instructions the instructions document are in a Word document there's screenshots from the application portal and then all the questions that you'll be asked in the application you could actually type out your answers to the questions in that word document and then copy and paste them to the online portal when you're ready to do that now this grant does close at 5:00 on August 22 so don't wait till the last minute to apply either um make sure you're really working a little bit towards your application as you go throughout July and then by mid August really thinking about sitting down and getting all that information into the online portal so this is what our tourism facing website looks like vc.org all the information for us is under the grants tab you would click the program that you're interested in in this case it's the micro business marketing leverage program and then that will take you to a landing page and on the right hand sidebar of the landing page you will see all the documents related to that program the terms and cond uh terms and conditions the instructions a glossery we know we use a lot of abbreviations in tourism so we created a glossery for you we have FAQ on there and then what you would do to get to the application and you would simply click the top link it'll open the electronic portal and you would start applying you can stop and start your application as you go but you need to save that link to your application so before you think about applying and before we uh take any questions research what we have to offer through the Welcome Center Program it's run a little bit separately from what we do in Grants they have a different website welcome a.com so they do things Beyond just rack cards in the Welcome Center um we've got buy UPS like videos playing in The Welcome Center you could do a Welcome Center takeover where your business's uh products are all on display on a table for the month you can staff that table give out freebies to folks coming in uh to the welcome centers take a look at those co-ops when we buy down the cost of certain advertising or uh we also do social media rebates look at those terms and conditions and instructions uh think about about how you're going to come up with match whether it's cash Mash or valuing earned or owned media like I said before there's a 10% limit on how much you can use for a merchandise program there's also 10% limits in other categories like your ascat BMI fees if you're a restaurant like your insurance if you're doing an event so take a look at some of those restrictions as well we talked about filling out your application in word and pasting it over and then make sure you get that letter of support from your destination marketing office don't wait till the last minute to get those letters we don't want them to be inundated with hundreds of requests for letters on August 22nd so make sure you're working closely with them they know what kind of marketing you're going to try and do and that you need a letter of support so on this screen are our email boxes specific to each program you can also reach out to uh Noah Caleb and I um for a one-on-one conversation or a virtual meeting or email us any questions you might have about our programs um and we'd be happy to answer them our schedule does get tight as we go through our grant cycle so please bear with us give us a couple days to answer an email uh have some flexibility in terms of what we can schedule if you want a one-on-one meeting and I'm going to go ahead and stop share here and we can take a look at some of the questions so I'll turn it back over to you Sheila so um we do have a couple question questions right now on the screen we can go over um the first one is my business is opening in the city of Fairfax but I don't see the city on a list what I need to contact Fairfax County you could contact Fairfax County there's a regional DMO in that area as well I don't know that off the top of my head but drop us an email and we'll connect you with the DMO director in that region fabulous um next question can you apply for multiple Grant programs um let's see I'm with an independent tic artist music festival is being held in October this year um I think the festival would be eligible for this program and the special Grant progam event grant program so could they apply for both yes you can we allow one application per EIN number in each program type however if you do end up getting two Awards the one of the awards may be reduced um due to getting two two Awards but right the micro business program would work for your upcoming event in October the special event and festivals round that's open now is for our 2025 calendar year events so you would want to apply for micro business for your 2024 event and then apply for special events and festivals for your October 2025 event great right do we have any other questions while we can pick Stacy's Noah's and Caleb's brain you did Cover a lot lot of good information very hand up very helpful um Robin can you drop your question into the q& hold on one sec let me see if I can get Robin okay Robin I did did you drop the hi can you hear me yes it won't let me drop no in um question and Q&A okay if you have a question you can go ahead and ask us now yes um how do we set up appointment with one of y'all so we could get all the information I'm sure I'm gonna go uh can you see the chat or um if you go to vc.org slgr

you'll see our contact information on the sidebar and I can go ahead and put that in the chat here in the Q&A here how about there we go yeah thank you yeah our email addresses are hosted online great okay so let's see we have um another question um if we are still in the process of opening but expect to be operational by January 2025 should we go ahead and apply or wait until the next round you need to be open and operating by the time the grant closes so if you're not going to be open till January then you would probably want to wait until we open the marketing leverage program in February um I'm just starting our business I don't have any Instagram followers Etc would it be better for me to wait until February to apply after I have more followers on social media not NE necessarily you can uh use any paid marketing that you're doing as match um you know Google your business see if you've gotten any editorial that you might not know about you could count that as a match as well great um and I'm going to answer this question out loud as well as reply um if you join late we will be um sending out an email with the recording and the slides as well as Stacy I think you posted information on how they can access it um on your side as well right that's correct okay do we have any other questions still have a little time so if anything pops into your all's Minds we'll go ahead and handle those questions I see hand up with Christopher um I don't see that it might have um it's gone now so okay um here's another question is paying for website development and advertising and marketing match um yes it um your website development but you got to have that Virginia is for Lovers logo on your website if you're requesting uh website development as part of the reimbursement side you need to include a scope of work and the work that was done on your website and you can't use the whole grant for that we want to see you then marketing and pushing out that that website exists so for instance an example might be let's say you want to add a booking engine to your website where folks can sign up to go on a guided tour with you that would be eligible to be reimbursed or could count as match but then we also want to see how you're marketing the fact that you now have that new booking engine on your website and I and I will share that we're seeing more and more folks just don't want to talk to somebody when they're planning their vacation they want to do everything online so having that online booking engine or that calendar where they can say all right on this date at this time I want to go on this VI tour I'm going to go ahead and pay for it right away I know that's done and that's part of my vacation iary so really think through how folks can interact with you digitally to plan their vacation um so another question for the required match uh I recently was awarded a local Grant to Vel my website which will Target tourism would that count as a match even though I'm paying for that with another Grant so we don't worry too much about the source of your Grant we're not too keen on matching State money to State money but if you have a locality Grant or a grant from your locality you can match that to State money if you have a Federal grant you can match that to our State dollars as well um and here's a question and I'm going to go ahead and read it in case someone else missed it too so um how are destination Loc defined I'm I'm not sure I understand the question per se um is it ttha t can if you can elaborate a little bit on your question please um I I can share that destination marketing offices are designated by the Loc it and then approved by Virginia tourism so you might see there might be a destination marketing office for a town that's located inside a county that also has a destination marketing office unmute question okay yes so that was pretty much my question I know there's you're talking about right now I did come in late but I know you're talking about like for marketing grants so reimburse for that and I I do have that I'll be very interested in seeing what the information was but um I also saw at one point that there were grants for like destination locations if your if your business can be um guess classified maybe as a destination location where would could be advertised to draw in um you know tourist or activity you know um to your location your like a destination spot like you know come to Virginia and visit you know my business you know and it has that kind of I guess whatever the criteria for that is or if you have I guess evidence that you know you've advertise I don't know if it's nationally or just you know Statewide or whatever um and that you have had business that have has come that way that you can kind of I guess count as you know we we you know we attract tourists or we attract you know we are our destination location type of thing what kind of business is it so it is um an event space and it is also um candle making a candle DIY bar kind like a painting sip but it's candle making um and you know it's really kind of elevated and it has you know certain elements that make it very social so yeah so so as that type of business you would be eligible for the micro business program the marketing leverage program and possibly the special events and Festival program depending if you've had two consecutive Day events um at that site but what you saw with the destination marketing office Grant is a set aside round just for our designated tourism offices um that have been designated by their locality they have to pass a resolution through their Town Council or their County Supervisors and VTC has to approve that there's usually only one per County um and so it's not possible to have a business be a destination marketing office but you are a tourism oriented business and open and uh eligible for all of our other programs okay great thank you um going to go ahead and move on so we can get a couple more questions in thanks TOA um let's see do you have any existing or would you be open to developing any preferred vendor relationships for marketing companies you would recommend Grant awardees to work with so on the grants team we don't do that our brand and marketing teams manage who we interact with with our vendors but again we're a state agency it's all done through RFP process our current advertising agency is sway our PR and communication agency is love the vendors that get selected to be in the co-op program are all managed through our brand office um happy to drop me an email I'm happy to connect you with them um but we don't particularly favor any marketing agency we don't try and steer you to any um particular marketing channels we're happy to talk through some ideas in terms of you know who might be able to hit your target market like the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte or um northern Virginia magazine if you're trying to hit those folks in Washington DC area um but being a state agency we don't particularly favor any other uh vendors other than those that go through the RFP process um one more question would a convenience store be eligible for these funds um would it be considered a way to attract tourists most like not um you could partner possibly on someone else's Grant so let's say you're um let's say you're the like the Raceway is going to apply like V Virginia International Raceway often applies you could be a partner on that their Grant because that's where folks are going to stop by and pick up their pre-ordered uh box lunches for the race um but we can't we can't fund like convenience stores across the state at all there's got to be more than just say just a shopping experi it needs to be Boutique retail that kind of thing okay we have about 15 more minutes so if anyone has a question if not we'll just wrap up here I guess while we wait Stacy do you have any last words of wisdom what I I can't stress enough read over those program instructions and terms and conditions before you apply prepare your application on in a Word document before you go into the electronic portal that's the best way to do it do it make sure you got all the information you need before you apply fabulous okay and if nothing oh wait um so um I'm looking at doing a spring break special to encourage visitation during shoulder season would Spring Breakers be an appropriate target market or Market or do I need to define a geographic area so Spring Breakers would be a good demographic but yes you would need to you would need to really Define a geographic area this is a small amount of money you're not going to be able to market the Spring Breakers Nationwide with $5,000 you know really look at those folks in the drive Market Philadelphia Charlotte Cleveland Baltimore uh New York Delaware and and the best thing to do is kind of saturate an area with your marketing so they then convert to booking that travel um here's a question I think they're looking to see if they're eligible what about a startup boat tour company YES tour guide tour guides uh tourque guide companies are eligible now we can't pay for any of your Capital costs to stand up your business we can't pay for your boat we can't pay wages or staff it's really marketing that you now have these tours available uh you need to be open and operating by the time the grant round closes um and we have I don't Caleb I'm not sure if you're answering this question in the background um and you got it the one about can you apply again I think if you win time that was answered okay do we have any other questions and again you all will this information so you can reach out directly um for questions I think I'll wrap us up here to thank you all this has been a fabulous as always presentation um I want to thank everyone who attended today and as again a reminder you will see an email with a link to the recording and the presentation slides if you would like to sign up for upcoming webinars or access recorder webinars please visit virginas sbc.org trining um these spdc resources are designed to be used in collaboration with your local sbdc advisers you can sign up for a free and confidential session by emailing help virginas sbc.org or via our website and since we have no other questions I'll go ahead and close this out I hope you all have a wonderful day and we hope to see you at our next session take care everyone thank you thank you Sheila take care bye

2024-07-25 11:17

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