Advertising and promotion commission discusses plans for 2021

BELLA VISTA — Discover Bella Vista, city’s advertising and promotion commission, discussed plans for next year during its Dec. 17 meeting.

The commission’s chairman, Doug Fowler, said taxpayer compliance will be a significant priority next year.

“It’s not optional,” he said. “It’s law, it is required. People don’t get to make a choice.”

People need to be diligent about paying their taxes, he said, because it isn’t fair to other businesses that are paying properly.

Despite some issues with collection, he said, the commission does continue to see decent income.

Commissioner Dan Lombard said the commission’s revenue was about $18,000 short of projections this year, but he expects that is largely because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Brandon Kelley with Velo Media, a firm hired to assist the commission, said that another priority for next year is going to be improving the commission’s web presence with new and better forms of content to get people interested in Bella Vista.

“Our mission is to increase the visibility of Bella Vista,” he said.

Through search engine optimization, the Discover Bella Vista website is now more likely to appear in web searches related to the city, he explained, and analytics help to see where traffic is flowing from so the commission can better learn what strategies are working and what needs to be adjusted.

Good content can attract an audience that will spread the information and help build the city’s reputation, he said, noting that it’s important to have authentic content and avoid canned stuff.

“When we approach Bella Vista, what we’re doing is looking at it as a whole universe of beautiful places,” he said.

The next step is content people can binge, he said. A series of short videos can get viewers invested and interested in the next piece, making them more likely to like and subscribe to get alerts about Bella Vista.

“I think the new website is going to be spectacular,” Kelley said.

Fowler said that the commission is expected to approve its 2021 budget and elect officers for their twoyear terms during the January meeting.