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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Our guest for this episode is Sean Evans. Sean is the President and CEO of the Meridian Chamber in Idaho. He has 29 years of experience in organizational management, marketing, media and nonprofit management. During his career in the media industry, he served as a publisher for newspapers in Oklahoma and Arkansas, before moving to Idaho to be publisher and vice president of the Idaho business review from 2009 to 2014 and also spent time with the Idaho press and meridian press. Sean served as president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Idaho from 2016 to 2020 he joined the meridian chamber in January of 2020 and led the organization during the fastest growing three years in its history. Sean understands strong partnerships and how to support our their business community, which is a priority for the chamber. He also is a proven leader who’s motivated and driven to lead their chamber to the next level. Sean was recognized in 2023 as a CEO of influence by the Idaho Business Review. His commitment to the community outside of his day to day job is shown in his board service with the Junior Achievement of Idaho Girl Scouts of silver stage board development committee, usglcs, Idaho Advisory Committee, and Sean currently serves as the board chair for the Idaho chamber Alliance. Sean and his wife Amanda, live in Meridian and have two daughters that have graduated from Mountain View High School and both currently attend Boise State University. But Sean, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Sean Evans 2:58
Brandon, thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast today. Something interesting about myself we you shared in my bio the my experience in the newspaper career and transition to nonprofit management. The unique thing about where I am today is when I look back over my previous career, I’ve actually served on five different chamber boards throughout my career. So it’s, it’s, you know, I’m on the other side of that board table from my board members and executive committee, but five different chambers in my career as where I’ve served, uh, so I’ve seen it from both sides. That definitely
Brandon Burton 3:47
gives you a kind of a unique perspective. I’m curious, do you look back at your time as a board member and think, Oh, I wish I approached it differently, or do you take your position now and think I understand where they’re coming from, and probably a little bit of a mix of both.
Sean Evans 4:01
Well, I can tell you, I look back and I say I could have been a much better board member.
Brandon Burton 4:09
That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the meridian chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, scope of work, budget, staff, that sort of stuff, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, as it’ll be very relevant to our topic.
Sean Evans 4:28
So Meridian chamber is located here. Meridian Idaho is located right next door to Boise, the capital, here in Idaho, and second largest city meridians, about 150,000 population. Our chamber has been around since 1956 meridian, though, for the longest time, was just seen as a, you know, a pit stop on your way from Boise to other parts. And I. Idaho and meridian has just grown when I moved to Idaho in 2009 Meridian was 75,000 people, so it has almost doubled in size in the time that I’ve been here, and just continues to grow for the longest time. Meridian was just seen as a bedroom community for Boise and Nampa, the city a little bit further to the west. At the time, Nampa was actually larger than meridian, but you lived in Meridian. It’s where you got your suburb house and things. Your kids went to school in Meridian, but you commuted into Boise, or you commuted into Nampa for work. Well, that’s changed over the last 10 years. In 10 years, Meridian has become not only a destination for retail with all the different types of shops that have opened here, we just recently opened a shield sporting goods store, the first in Idaho. We’ve also seen our office complexes just grow because the businesses and the corporate communities started saying, Well, wait a minute, all of our people live in Meridian. Why don’t we just locate in Meridian and drop the commute for everyone? So the meridian chamber has been a part of a community that’s been rapidly growing for about a decade. Covid definitely impacted everyone a little bit when I joined the chamber in January of 2020 covid hit in March my first year was nothing what I thought it was going to be when I actually, you know, became a staff member for a Chamber of Commerce. We had to lay off half our staff and just basically go into, you know, how do we survive type mode? The here in Idaho, things opened up pretty quickly, and we got back to to normal business pretty rapidly. When, when I joined the chamber, we were just under 500 members. Today, we’re 923 members total in the the meridian chamber. So you know, a lot of that is, you know, the the approach that we took during covid of really trying to support, promote and advocate for our members. We also, as I mentioned earlier, we’re in a community that’s growing rapidly. I mean, I hate to brag like this, because I’ve had conversations with others, but we’re averaging 18 new members a month. Wow, that’s our average for the last three years.
Brandon Burton 7:36
So awesome.
Sean Evans 7:38
You know, we’re having the drops. We’re having members not renew. Of course, we have the people that come on that just want the ribbon cutting and the the exposure of opening their business, but growing our chamber and really trying to help that business community has been our our board’s mission, my mission, and really trying to improve the support and advocacy that we do for the the membership. That’s
Brandon Burton 8:07
awesome. So what’s your staff size look like now?
Sean Evans 8:11
We are only a staff of four, okay, four full time employees here at the meridian chamber. So, you know, the we get a lot done with the the small staff that we have, we are growing. We’ve got plans fourth quarter to add another staff member specifically in the membership area. But, yeah, we’re, we’re small, small, but mighty team.
Brandon Burton 8:40
Yeah, running lean and mean. I like it. It’s very good. Well, that definitely helps kind of set the stage as to what the context is for the meridian chamber as we get into our topic for our conversation today, which will be focusing most of our conversation around how a chamber can go about marketing on a shoestring budget. And I’m sure there’s some good stories along with that, as we dive into this topic. As soon as I get back from this quick break.
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All right, Sean, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, our topic today is on Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, so you may be coming from an advantage, coming from a publisher background, and that definitely helps with marketing and seeing things that work and don’t work. But let’s share some of that knowledge with these Chamber Champions that are out here listening. What are, what are some of these things that you see from a marketing perspective with your chamber that are effective and helpful for others to hear. Yeah,
Sean Evans 11:27
Brandon, thank you. You’re absolutely right. I spent 21 years in the media world, print media, primarily publishing newspapers, magazines, print product. Towards the end of my career, we were shifting into digital media, internet advertising and things like that. So definitely, you know, have been a part of that, that mix of advertising, marketing and promotion, not only for you know, my my businesses that I ran, but was helping others to do that. I left the newspaper industry because there had been such a dramatic shift to online advertising, social media and things so chambers typically don’t have a tremendous marketing budget. You know, the ones that are well established, you know, they’re they’re going to be marketing their own activities and things like that. They don’t do much as far as marketing, you know, just the value of what the chamber brings to businesses and things. So one of the approaches that we have taken is with a small team that we have four members, we can’t get it all done. So we really engage our ambassadors. Most chambers, you’ve got an ambassador committee that acts as your hospitality arm of your your committee. We’ve really empowered our ambassadors to be, you know, basically an additional sales force for us out there in the community. We get most of our referrals from our ambassadors. They’re out working the community for their day job all the time. They are our champions. They are doing things we reward that we take care of our ambassadors very well and give them a lot of the the credit for what we’re bringing on board the so I would just encourage the chambers out there to find ways to get your ambassadors even more engaged and empower them to be that that additional sales force for you.
Brandon Burton 13:39
So let’s lean into that a little bit more and learn more about how to do that. You mentioned you reward the ambassadors. What are, what are some of the motivations, maybe training that goes into empowering these ambassadors and really helping to give them that charge, because most of these ambassadors are going to have jobs and careers of their own, and so how do you get them to balance the time and really give priority to or give time to prioritize advocating for the chamber and getting the chamber name out the community? Well, one
Sean Evans 14:11
of the easiest ways is feed them. I mean, you give them food, and you can get a lot of things out of them. We have a monthly Ambassador luncheon. Is something that we have been doing for quite a while. It’s a great time to bring together these, you know, people that are, for the most part, are all extroverts and really want to get out and network and have a good time. During that luncheon, we’re giving them new member packets. We’re giving them our renewal packets to take out they want to go out and engage other businesses. And this gives them a foot in the door for not only their business, but, you know, for them to make connections in the community. And that’s that’s really what one of the biggest rewards for an ambassador on our committee is you. To be on that front line of welcoming new businesses to the community, being one of the first through their door, and just being a part of that, that welcoming bandwagon for for new businesses in our community, and then also engagement the activities that we do with our ambassadors, we’re always, you know, giving them the mic at events so that they can be the ones that do some of the welcoming and things to give them more exposure, to help boost their company and their exposure. Social media posts on what ambassadors are doing, we encourage our ambassadors to take pictures when they’re engaging members and things like that. So people will see, you know, all the things that the Chamber’s doing on social media or events and activities in the community, and our ambassadors wear name badges. So you know, many people confuse them for, oh, you work for the chamber? No, I’m just an ambassador, but they have that kind of appearance of working for the chamber. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 16:08
I like that, yeah. And there’s some really creative ways to utilize ambassadors. And I like the name badge. I like that. It gives that representation of we’re here on behalf of the chamber. But also, like you said, engaging these ambassadors at events, they’re having their business plugged as well, and they get to be the first ones to welcome these new businesses in the community. So those are all great things. And who doesn’t like a good lunch, right? What are, what are some of these other ways that you found to be effective when it comes to marketing with the limited budget,
Sean Evans 16:40
yeah. So the one thing I will tell you is post covid. When we came back and started staffing back up, the first position that I hired coming out of covid was a new position for the meridian chamber, and it was our marketing and communications coordinators position, we felt like, you know, with events, maybe still on the fence, you know, people coming back to events and things, we had to do more to market and communicate to our members and to just the the general Business community. Our marketing communications coordinator has really leaned into utilizing social media heavily, not only just promoting our events, but communicating. You know new members? What new members are about? The we have a program online, similar to your podcast, ours is called Business buzz, to where we basically, every week, interview a new member on a social media program, broadcast it out across Facebook, LinkedIn, our YouTube channels. And that would that came out of covid, but it was such a great success that we we’ve kept it going, and once a week, we feature a one of our business members, and it’s such a huge success, we have a calendar booked out until February with businesses that are lined up to be on that program. So once again, and that goes out over social media. My previous career, I definitely saw the shift going towards social media and digital advertising. And the more that you can do in that realm, the better. Much of it is free that you can do when you’ve got to do a little bit of boosting or or spending the money, a little bit of money goes a long way on on social media platforms. Yes,
Brandon Burton 18:49
so with business buzz, you mentioned you do these interviews over the social platforms, is it? Does it live on YouTube at the end? Like, can people go back and see past episodes or past interviews. It
Sean Evans 19:01
lives on YouTube and our Facebook account, LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily keep the recordings there for everybody, but definitely on our YouTube channel and on Facebook, you can go back and look Facebook. I mean, I said we started this during covid. So there’s programs that were just, you know, me and another person on a camera today, though, we actually take our camera gear into that member’s business and sit down with them in their business, sometimes even walking around their business to feature some of their products or their services.
Brandon Burton 19:40
Yeah, I love that. I would love to see more chambers doing things like that, whether it’s a podcast or like a video, like you guys do these video interviews. But everybody likes a good story of an entrepreneur, success stories, how you got started, that sort of thing. And if you can highlight those successes and be able to share them and any. And if there’s an opportunity to to have them talk about the impact that the chambers had in their success even even better, it’s a win, win, win all around. So
Sean Evans 20:08
I love that. And then Brandon, you know, to to add to that. The other thing that I would just encourage chambers to do is, you know, if your marketing communications team let them, let them get creative with social media. We’ve got an amazing marketing communications coordinator. She’s young, she’s in tune with the things Instagram, all of the social media trends and things. She’ll go out and create reels for new members or for an event that we’ve got coming up. She just recently had a very successful reel hit over 700,000 views, and it was just a cute little reel that she did at one of our monthly networking events. And that just brings more and more exposure to your chamber and what your Chamber’s doing, and the engagement that your chamber has in the community.
Brandon Burton 21:06
That’s right, do you know about how often she’s posting different reels? A couple times a week? I would
Sean Evans 21:12
say she’s doing, you know, two or three a week. You know, she’s constantly trying to find that next viral reel that she’s gonna create. So,
Brandon Burton 21:22
so, and I asked that just, I know some people have kind of dabbled with reels, and they don’t see a lot of traction with it, but from what I understand, it takes the repetition, it takes, you know, getting several in there and that consistency, for the algorithm to really pick it up and get in front of people. So if you’ve tried it before, don’t just give up on it. Keep, keep doing it. Have a plan. So like, he’s how you said, doing reels for events and new members. And if you have a strategy to say, this is what we’re doing reels for, this is for how often, and put it out there on a regular basis, I think you have a higher chance of being able to see success like
Sean Evans 22:00
and you know, it’s that type of marketing, that type of branding that you’re doing that creates that in my former advertising world, we call Poma pop of mind awareness. So anytime a new business is coming to town, the word is out there that, oh, you’ve gotta join the chamber. You gotta join the meridian chamber. It’s, it’s the fun chamber. There’s lots of activities. They’re always doing things. They’re, you know, they’re growing. That is the type of brand that you want to build in your your area, your community, especially whenever you know, there’s a lot of different options for businesses to be involved in, whether it’s a another networking group, the bnis of the world, or things, you want that membership to know that you know you’re there to support, promote and advocate for them, but they need to be involved. They need to be coming to your events and activities, to be engaged, to get the most of their membership. That’s
Brandon Burton 23:01
right, and engagement is so key. Everybody engages in different ways. And for a lot of people, their engagement may be with social media, but it keeps them there long enough. It keeps them seeing the value. It keeps them involved, because that’s what they have, what their attention, what their schedule allows for them to do, engagement wise. So meet people where they are. Are there any other of these strategies that you guys have employed to really magnify what you guys are doing on that limited budget?
Sean Evans 23:34
You know, the only other thing I would say is we’ve really leaned into networking events, and we have two networking events a month, standing on our calendar and after hours and a First Friday. We see this as an opportunity for members and guests to come together. So, you know, we’re a membership organization, but we’re always trying to bring in new members. These networking events are an opportunity for that potential, that prospect, that that new business coming to town, to come and engage, learn about the chamber, see how engaged the rest of the membership is at these events. And it just makes them want to be a part of that. We we have a saying here at the meridian chamber. Is when you join the meridian chamber, you’re joining the meridian chamber family, and that’s how we try to treat all of our members. It’s getting a little harder with 900 plus, compared to, you know, 400 the big family. Yeah, big family. But it is something that those networking events have really helped us. Do we see, you know, 1015, new members, potential guests, coming to each one of our networking events. And then you have our ambassadors. Then you have our members that just you know, show everyone you know, how welcoming. And this chamber is and the support that we do for all of our businesses, and right there that’s another salesperson for us, and just helps bring more people into the fold. So, you know, what little you’ve got to do to you know, put on some of these networking events. Make them free, make them where you can bring in lots of people to see the engagement that your chamber has with each other. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 25:28
that’s great. Sean. As we start to wrap things up, I wanted to see about for a chamber listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level. A lot of that has to do with marketing. But what kind of tip or strategy might you offer to one of these other chambers that’s listening in that situation to try to help them accomplish that goal?
Sean Evans 25:51
Really invest in that marketing and communication role. I can’t tell you how important it is for to have someone in that position that’s planning out your social media programming, because, as you mentioned earlier, it’s about repetition. It’s about being consistent. It’s about being providing content for your members and your non members on there. I mean, social media is open to everyone. We don’t have a closed Facebook page or anything that we do this on, because we’re promoting those members through social media. We’re promoting us. So you know, everybody in our business and community is getting some value out of that, but really having a consistent program, plan, schedule of what you’re going to do is really how you’re going to be successful in that. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 26:46
I love that tip, and I think some chambers probably not as much anymore, but there was a sense a while back where it’s like, I don’t want to inundate people with seeing too much of us, right? But I think people are kind of getting over that and realizing the value of the repetition and being able to be in front of people, because you’re not going to get everybody with every social media post. So no
Sean Evans 27:07
and, and there’s so many different social media platforms today. I mean, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, you lean into Tiktok and some of the others. You’ve got different audiences on all of those. I mean, you know, Facebook audience is different than Instagram, even though it’s owned by the same company, that’s why they have two different products. Then your LinkedIn. You know, you definitely gotta, you know, know what to post on LinkedIn compared to Tiktok. So those are the things that to look at
Brandon Burton 27:38
absolutely well as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, I always like to ask, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Sean Evans 27:50
Oh, I think chambers have a bright future. We are an association membership organization, and the more we can do to demonstrate to the business community the value that we bring, whether it’s from the the initial ribbon cutting or the the ability to keep you engaged in what’s going on in the the community, I think chambers will be successful if they continue to just go by that mantra of support, promote and advocate for our business community. It’s different than some of the the networking groups out there that really try and, you know, focus in on specific leads and things like that. Chambers are truly helping all businesses in the community, whether the businesses know it or not, you just got to find ways to make sure that your members see the value of being a member. Absolutely.
Brandon Burton 28:49
I love that, and I like the distinction between other networking groups too, because I think a lot of a lot of people will look at those as competition and really seeing the distinct differences and leaning into here’s where the value that our chamber offers that none of these other networking groups provide, and you can be a member of those groups too. That’s great. I mean, get the leads, make those relationships. It’s that’s fantastic. But here’s what we’re doing to support business in the entire community. So I love that. But Sean, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn a little bit more about your guys’ strategy and how you’re doing things there in Meridian, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? You
Sean Evans 29:35
know, visit our website, MeridianChamber.org, you’ll find a lot of information on there about our events, our activities, the committees that we have, the ways that we engage our members. You can find my email there under our staff directory as well, and just you know, see what our community has to offer. As I said from the beginning, I. Very fortunate that we’re living in a community that’s growing. I’ve been in markets in my previous career where the community wasn’t growing and and that’s a much bigger struggle than having a community that’s growing fast. So absolutely
Brandon Burton 30:13
well, we’ll we’ll link your website in our show notes for this episode as well. So make it easy for people to find and find your email and and see your mug shot on there as well, if they wanted. But this has been great. Sean, I appreciate you spending time with us today, here on chamber tap podcast and sharing some of these insights and approaches you guys are taking to market your chamber throughout your community and really make an impact, as you guys are seeing this high growth there too. So some of this is, uh, attributed to that, to getting yourselves out there and being, you know, on the forefront of the marketing as well. So great job. Well,
Sean Evans 30:50
thank you, Brandon for having me today. Appreciate
Brandon Burton 30:55
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