Downtown London’s Creative Prizes Have Driven Thousands of Dollars Into Local Downtown Businesses

Goal

Downtown London was seeking a way to get more people to visit downtown and spend money in their local businesses – a common theme we find among downtown districts. Visitors are an added bonus, but they saw a huge opportunity within London’s local population. There are over half a million residents in London, Ontario, but only about 11,000 of those live downtown. Downtown London’s Mackenzie Preszcator shared their challenge, saying, “People who don't live downtown used to say they had no reason to come here, so we're working to change that by showing locals just how much downtown London has to offer."

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The Solution

Downtown London started working with Bandwango and launched their first trails in 2024. They have trails that promote outdoor patios, music and arts, and sweet treats. They also have a short duration trail during the Christmas season. All are check-in challenges that incentivize passholders to visit local businesses, allowing passholders to check in twice per location – a tactic that helps drive return visits. In addition to the money that was being spent each time a person visited a local establishment, Downtown London decided to try out another tool they could leverage to drive even more spending in downtown businesses.

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Using Downtown Dollars as Prizes

‍‍They had already created a Downtown Dollars program that utilized cards redeemable at almost 200 merchants in downtown London. Instead of just letting people purchase these as gifts like they had originally intended, they decided to also use them as prize incentives for their trails. This furthered the economic impact of the trails by giving passholders another reason to visit downtown businesses and spend more money. 

Each trail had $10, $20, and $50 Downtown Dollar cards available as prizes, in addition to other prizes like t-shirts and swag bags. A passholder could only win each individual prize one time. Technically, someone could win up to $80 in Downtown Dollars that would then be spent in downtown businesses. In an effort to keep people using their pass even once they had won all of the prizes, Downtown London also incorporated sweepstakes giveaways into the passes that served as additional incentives. 

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The Marketing 

Downtown London includes QR codes and branding for their trails wherever they can, including the monthly event calendar that they distribute. They’ve done a great job using some of our favorite budget-friendly marketing tactics, such as utilizing social media and creating strategic partnerships. They’ve also worked with micro-influencers and have even had ads on local buses. A few other marketing tactics that Ouellette and Preszcator felt have been integral to their success include: 

• Collateral for local businesses: This includes coasters, table tents, postcards, coffee sleeves, etc. that contain branding that promotes their trails. Downtown London designs the items, has them created, and then distributes them to local businesses. 

• Social media videos: They do different versions of videos, and have a lot of fun with these. They’ve tried more professional videos, but feel the cute, silly ones perform best. They said they see increases in pass sign-ups pretty quickly when they launch the videos.  

• Popping up events: This is something they created where they pop up at downtown businesses with their popcorn machine and show appreciation to downtown workers. Ouellette shared, “We'll also have the coasters with us, and our event calendars. There's a QR code for the trails there. Usually when we do those events, we get more sign ups.”

• Sharing information with other community partners: By sharing information about their trails with other community partners, they’ve seen others promote their trails as well. For example, their local tourism office, Tourism London Canada, has created a page on their website to promote the Downtown London trails and is helping spread the word. 

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The Results

• Over 46,000 Check-Ins: Since last year, the trails have sent 46,047 people into local businesses. 25,000 of those happened in the first six months of this year. Since the business industries vary between their passes, so does the average spend. However, using an extremely conservative estimated average of $10 spending per visit, the trails have already generated over $460,000 in direct spending to local businesses. That is a very low estimate, but still shows a significant impact. 

• Over $21,000 has been spent in downtown businesses through their Downtown Dollars program: On top of the money being spent by passholders when they’re checking in, there’s another way that money is being pushed into downtown. By using their Downtown Dollars as a prize incentive, they’ve given passholders over $21,000 in Downtown Dollars that are redeemable at their downtown businesses. That is actual money that is being spent in those businesses. 

• They’ve driven further economic impact through coupon redemptions: Although they don’t require participating businesses to provide coupons on their passes, some take advantage of this opportunity. 161 coupons have been redeemed by passholders, and they range in discounts from 10-30% off to free gift with purchase. The usage of those coupons indicates that people are spending money when they are visiting participating businesses. Ouellette shared that she’s seen the number of coupons increase this year, as business owners have learned the importance of them.  

• They’re winning awards: At the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association (OBIAA) BIA Awards Gala, they were awarded a few awards, including the Award of Excellence for their marketing of the Downtown London Trails. Ouellette shared that Bandwango’s reporting data was an important part of being able to show the true ROI of their marketing efforts, and helped them secure this achievement.   

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Downtown London’s Six Tips for Downtown Associations

• Make it easy for your businesses. Ouellette said, “The less work the businesses have to do, the better. Make it easy for them to say yes. We send an email and tell them to just reply yes to the email if they want to be on the trail. If they want to provide a discount, we have them fill out a Google form, but it’s very easy for them to just get added if they reply to the email.” Downtown London also creates and delivers all of the collateral to participating businesses so they can promote the trails at their locations. 

• Use reporting data to share success stories with local businesses and let them know how many people have visited their establishment. The businesses are seeing the traffic come through their doors, but when you can let them know the exact numbers, it’s often eye-opening for them to hear the exact number of visitors the trails have brought in. This also helps to solidify participation in the next year’s initiative, and shows the economic impact the downtown association is bringing them. 

• Use short duration incentives to encourage people to attend downtown events: Ouellette said they’ve taken advantage of the ease of Experience Builder and have added in short duration incentives when they’ve had events downtown. She said, “We’ll invite people to check in at a location within a short timeframe during an event. You have to be there, and then you can get like 200 or 300 points for the check-in, but it’s only for a few hours. That gives people more incentive to go to the downtown events.”

• Don’t feel like you have to build it all at once. With the new Experience Builder, it’s even easier to build passes on your own time. Preszcator loves the new self-service platform and said, “I like how it fits into our busy lifestyle. I don’t have to sit down for two days and plan the whole thing. I can add things whenever I like and go back in and add finishing touches on my own time.” She said it still didn’t take much time though, and shared her experience building her most recent trail, “If I would have been sitting down to build the whole thing at once, it would have taken me maybe three and a half to four hours.” She said she’s found it to be very easy to use and when she did have a question, she was able to book a meeting with the Bandwango team super quickly. 

• Make some fun videos and tie in participating businesses. Preszcator stressed how important the videos have been to the success of their trails. They don’t have to be professionally produced either. She did share one tip though, “The businesses are really excited when we include them in the videos. When we film a video, we usually try to choose five locations to go and visit and film there.”

• Use the trails as a way to build community connection. Ouellette loves that the trails are strengthening relationships with downtown businesses and helping drive economic value to them. However, she’s also been able to use this as a way to connect with community members as well since they are picking up their prizes at her office. She said, “It’s really nice to hear the feedback from the people who are coming in to redeem their prizes.” She enjoys hearing them share stories about how the trails are helping them discover new places in downtown London. 

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Conclusion

Downtown London is thrilled about the success they’ve seen with their trails over the last year. Reporting data confirms they are achieving their goal of bringing more people into the downtown area – even those people that previously said they don’t go downtown. They’ve gotten creative with their prizes and found a way to use their Downtown Dollars to push people back into local businesses since their prizes are only redeemable at downtown businesses. Local downtown businesses are thriving, and they are being recognized for their innovative marketing with big awards.

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