South Coast Connections

To show our appreciation for supporting us in the early stages of South Coast Connections' formation, ultra-low rates are available starting from just £1 per week (excluding VAT), but ONLY to the first 25 local small business owners that we feature, so do take advantage of advertising with us from just £12 for 12 whole weeks!

 

If you would like to advertise with us, we will build a dedicated, attractive South Coast Connections PAGE for you on our website and we will then introduce you and actively promote your business to our subscribers and followers via our:

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Newsletter

Dorset Diary

Dorset Digest blog

Dorset Stores online shop

Enticing monthly competitions

Dorset SCC social media channels

Dorset Discounts - vouchers and offers

Dorset Great Places Map, and its related pages

 

We have over 3,500 Twitter fans and our Dorset Great Places Map has been viewed over 10,000 times. We've also just created a fab new blog the 'Dorset Digest' and additional DorsetSCC accounts on all of the most popular social media platforms to further boost, our clients' and Dorset's profile online.

 

One of our clients' dedicated business page is already ranking high in Google Search - it appears on their much-sought-after First Page when people search for an osteopath in both Dorchester and Weymouth - he was very pleased obviously to rank between 3 to 5 but do check out how impressive our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills are for yourself!

 

Small businesses can advertise with us from just £1 per WEEK (and not per CLICK for a small box ad!), and once you have a page, you can instruct us to update it for a small editing fee starting from just £10, but we are a new company and all of our rates are low as we'd like everyone to be "ON BOARD" with us! So, no matter the size of your business, don't hesitate to get in touch as we know the area very well and we will price not just competitively, but fairly according to what you can afford.

 

Periodical changes to your page may include informing your customers about your newest services, new stock, offers, discounts and promotions, such as holding an annual, end-of-stock sale or flash sale.  

 

You can offer discount vouchers to buy or to give away, or create a discount code for customers to quote at your physical or online checkout etc... Offering voucher codes to quote easily allows you to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. 

 

Providing discounts and vouchers isn't mandatory in any way and all offer and all promotions featured must be genuine as people easily through fake "samey" offers and high discounts only made possible by exaggerating or inflating true value - they would much rather see a fair price in the first place!  

 

We can also add an own online store to your page where you can set different collections and personalise everything from the images and videos shown on your vouchers prior to purchase to setting up individual discounts, coupons and shipping fees, so instead of trading just during your normal opening hours, you can easily obtain new orders and customers around the clock! Once you have a store, we can also feature your products or services in our "Bestsellers Collection". 

 

You must agree to cover the Paypal transaction fees incurred of around 3-4% of sales as we cannot pay these out of our 10% commission.

Most voucher sites take at least 30% commission but we want you to be able to SHOWCASE your very best service, product or produce and not force you to cut corners by having to pay both high commission AND being obliged to offer a substantial discount.

 

We all know that many businesses in Dorset rely on tourism and that trade peaks during the summer season - small businesses simply can't offer many discounts whilst they are full and at or near full capacity but it's another story over the winter months, when they have to work hard to entice customers away from their cozy homes, so, we let YOU choose what's best for YOUR business. 

 

You can even make certain vouchers and events available to verified local businesses & charities ONLY via our new private Dorset B2B Hub. Specify "owners only" or "owners + x amount of staff / friends / loyal clients".

 

 We thought that this would be a GREAT way to enable business to network easily without having to attend set meetings and it enables you to save your keenest trade discounts for people who you know also have a vested interest in promoting Dorset, who may well go on to recommend you to their own colleagues, customers and their fat mailing lists, because that's what networking is all about - we have to work together to succeed!

 

For the moment, it's free to join but naturally, unless you operate as a charity, our usual low advertising rates do apply to set up your own page and offer, whether it can be accessed by general users or authorised users only. Please contact us to request to join and please do share this opportunity with fellow local business owners. 

 

We do believe that networking breakfasts, meetings, workshops etc... are fantastic way to meet new people as you just can't beat meeting people face-to-face, so if you organise these types of events locally, please do consider taking out a page to help to widen your reach as our focus is on providing things to do and see for locals as well as our tourists.

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We really admire Enterprise Nation and Wessex Enterprise for their grants ad regular business events, training and support.

 

Setting up a B2B website for business owners on the South Coast was actually our original business idea but we soon realised that this was a much smaller market than offering vouchers to the general public, and it was the serious lack of discount vouchers available in West Dorset, North Dorset and the Purbecks which made us change course, especially as we wanted to be able to buy some fab vouchers ourselves, without travelling 1-2 hours and spending £££s just to obtain some of those tantalising discounts!

 

We really do love Dorset and this is clearly reflected within all of the extra features on our website which the main voucher sites do not provide, such as our Dorset Great Places Map and all of its related pages. We created our online guide to enable our visitors to discover Dorset with ease and also to inform local people about relevant local businesses, charities, events, activities, sports, workshops, products, produce, services, promotions AND wildlife, and it really is building up to be a rather comprehensive guide, which has taken us 100s of long-yet-pleasant hours to build!

 

We are now focusing on featuring more things to see & do, and places to stay rather than things to buy but we are happy to feature premium products, produce and services, with a strong preference for all things local, natural and organic, which are in line with our own strong ethical principles - we haven't published an ethical policy but ethics are definitely at the heart of what we do.

 

Please feel free to embed our map onto your website or blog, or share it via social media as much as you like - it's already had over 5,000 view and that's what it's there for!

 

Also, did you know that you can change our DGP map to "Terrain View" for when you're exploring the coast or countryside, as it's much easier to see where you are! You can  really capture people's imagination by adding add lots of photos and videos to individual map pins - please see our "Fleet, Moonfleet & Fleet Lagoon" pin for an example, and if you have any photos or videos which you would like to be added to any of our pins, or if you know of a Great Place which we haven't included yet, please email us.

 

You do not need to have ANY technical knowledge to set up a page: simply send us all the info about your company or offer, including your : 

• T&Cs

• Pricing

• Social media links

• Address and contact details

• Design ideas (if you have any)

• Page colours  (by Hex# if you have them)

• Logos and images in a JPEG, PNG or GIF format

• Campaign duration or deadlines such as valid from/to dates

 

We will then add you to our DGP map and its related sub-sections & pages and also promptly build your SCC page and send it to you via a private link for approval prior to publishing it live.

 

We are happy to arrange a callback at a convenient time to discuss all of your requirements, including helping to devise discount rates and effective and ENTICING promotion campaigns. We can provide a professional photography service at a great rate.

 

We can also easily link to your own online store or embed a small store (including vouchers) within your page.

 

If you do not have a website or online store, we can build one for you at a fab rate within just 48 hours, for instance:

• If you don't mind some branding on your website, we can build you a website from just £99 for 'eternity'.

• Website updates are priced from just £10

• Websites with your own personalised domain and email cost from just £199 per year or more with online booking and online store

• Social Media set-up, training and management

• We may also be able to fix, update, modernise or otherwise improve your existing website, starting from just £29 so do stop stressing out for hours and delegate all of your online marketing tasks to us!

 

We have spent decades between us working hard for other people and we're willing to work just as hard now that we are also small business owners, to enable our clients to take a break themselves and to sit back and enjoy Dorset - there's so many ways of doing things more effectively now but it's all too easy to get caught up with keeping up with various updates, plus updating social media so let us help you!

 

But we will be promoting South Coast Connections, our advertisers and stunning Dorsetshire itself much further afield within the next few months, focusing first on cities with good transport links to Dorset - so please help us to promote Dorset and its many Great Places so that none of our hard work goes to waste at all!

 

Again, our prices start at just £1 per week for small businesses and our minimum term is just 12 weeks, which gives ample time for your business to reach optimum exposure through our many channels and it allows us ample time to tweak our marketing campaign in order to maximise its effectiveness.

 

There's no hidden charges, just a new way to advertise 2017-style, especially in the smaller towns and the more rural areas of Dorset, where many businesses just don't have large advertising budgets... And for those who do, or for those who need more time spent on marketing their business or on their website or store design, our fee will naturally go up - as we have explained, we have a large range of premium packages available, including creating or improving your existing website, introducing you via social media to our followers, a lot of whom are fellow local business owners, as well as the opportunity to also advertise on many of the key pages within our website! 

 

For simplicity, VAT is excluded from our great low rates described above but the obligatory 20% VAT is included when you purchase our vouchers, hence the price difference. By taking out any of our fab promotion packages, you agree to our Terms & Conditions.