December 20, 2007
Report from County Chamber of Commerce

By Dave Maxwell

The regular meeting of the Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce was held December 11 in the Cooperative Extension Office in Caliente.

Kaye Medlin mentioned that at the meeting of the Lincoln County Commissioners she attended December 3, there might be funding to hire an Executive Director for the Chamber of Commerce and she would keep the Chamber posted.

Website advertising by the Chamber was talked about and after long discussion, a policy was adopted not to accept any advertising for businesses or other groups or organizations, although certain exceptions could be granted and reviewed, on a case-by-case basis.

Bruce Rettig of Charter Advertising suggested that a new page on the LincolnCounty.com website could include published minutes of Chamber meetings or a calendar of events.

District 36 State Assemblyman, Ed Goedhart, from Pahrump attended the meeting. After hearing the report from LCAT Chairman Keith Larson, Goedhart said he was interested in hearing more about LCAT and what their goals are. The next regularly scheduled LCAT meeting is January 16, 2008 at 6:30 at the Pioche Town Hall.

Rettig also gave a presentation on “where we started, and where we are going” with the Chamber’s advertising and marketing campaign. Rettig’s group, Charter Advertising, started working with the Chamber in 2004 and built their advertising campaign around the Chamber’s website. At present, the website is getting about 7,000 hits a month and Rettig said these are the type of hits that spend a little time looking at what the website has to offer, not just the “hit and peck” type.

He reported that the 2008 ad campaign is going to take a different design turn and focus more on the activities of each town in the County. Alamo will be featured in the January/February ad in Nevada Magazine with the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge being the main attraction there. The new website design will facilitate links to various pages and make it easier to track page-visits and amount of time spent on the website.

In addition, Charter Advertising in the past has tried to target the “out-of-towners” in the Las Vegas market. However, with sky rocketing gas prices a shift in emphasis is going to be placed on people coming to the County and staying for a day or so. "Adventures within a tank of gas" is an emphasis that can be explored, relating to opportunities for camping, nice motel/bed and breakfast lodgings, hiking, and so on.

Next meeting of the Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce is set for January 8, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. at the BLM Caliente Field Office.