CAMBERWELL BUSINESS MARKETING LEVY – WORKING TOGETHER

Since 1996, the Camberwell Centre Traders Association has vigorously promoted local businesses, like yours, across Camberwell Junction. It has allowed us to create the Camberwell shopping precinct brand and showcase our local businesses to shoppers and residents, while highlighting the many benefits of visiting this vibrant open-air shopping precinct.

We have created and executed countless successful marketing campaigns and events – including our Christmas and Easter promotions, as well as our ‘We’ve still got it all’ campaign throughout the coronavirus pandemic – to keep our shopping precinct front of mind for consumers.

To deliver creative and captivating strategies for your business and the wider precinct, we depend on the Camberwell marketing levy funds. All businesses contribute via their rates which allow us all to work together to support each other and the precinct, and protect the value of your business.

The levy has enabled us to develop sophisticated marketing campaigns and activities that benefit every business, either directly or indirectly, and elevate the prestige of the Camberwell precinct for you, your staff, and our community. Our collective marketing allows us to run a robust and effective website and integrated social media strategy to provide the latest, relevant information about Camberwell precinct to the local and broader community looking for supplies and services across both the Camberwell Shopping and Camberwell Business websites.

Your trader page listing is so much more than a directory. It has key information about your business like your trading hours and special offers, is optimised for SEO performance, and has a Google Maps display. There is the capability to field customer enquiries, as well as links to your own website and social media accounts. For some businesses this may be the best way your customers will find you, especially if they forget your name or aren’t aware of your Camberwell branch.

We work closely with a full-service marketing agency to ensure our marketing campaigns are professional, with editorial, social media activity, digital, print and radio advertising campaigns working cohesively to draw shoppers to our website and your trader page. Our campaigns also feature stylish printed collateral like our ‘What’s on the menu?’ booklet, which was recently sent to 30,000 homes in Camberwell and surrounding suburbs.

We also run our highly effective competitions and campaigns for seasonal and retail events like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. Supporting videos and ‘Meet a Trader’ stories showcase the precinct and entice customers to discover our businesses.

Without the levy, we wouldn’t have these large, well-crafted marketing activities that draw so many shoppers to the precinct every year. The levy helps our shopping precinct stand out from other strips and compete with the larger shopping centres.

Our marketing activities have been particularly important during COVID-19, where our team has worked tirelessly to keep residents and shoppers informed of critical updates. The association launched a trader engagement program at the start of the restrictions to contact local businesses. We updated the website with crucial trading information and that has helped shoppers discover ways to continue doing business with their favourite stores. We were also able to contact locals quickly and directly through our extensive database of website subscribers.

The association was able to provide a single source of information where shoppers could find out how local stores had been impacted by the recent restrictions, and how they could continue to support local businesses. That’s the power of working together with shared resources.

As we start to plan our next five-year strategy for a new levy term, we welcome your feedback and suggestions about what you’d like to see from our marketing activities going forward. We want to ensure our strategy is serving your business, as well as promoting the shopping precinct as a whole.

We’re open to suggestions and invite you to share your ideas with us, so we can make our marketing activities even better over the next five years. If you’ve got an idea or feedback, please send an email to Kerry Daly: kdaly@camberwellca.com.au