PAUL REACH, of Swannaton Road, Dartmouth, writes:

I was interested to see that the Mayflower 400 committee is asking for £10,000 from ratepayers’ funds.

I may be pointing out the obvious, but supporting this kind of project was exactly

why the Dartmouth Business Improvement District was formed, and I have no doubt that, had the BID continued, this project would have benefitted from significantly more funding than it is asking for from Dartmouth Town Council. Probably in the form of marketing and promotion, rather than funding.

So here is a suggestion.

When the BID company unwisely decided, against all advice, to close down, it had at least £60,000 of unspent levies in the bank. So far none of the levy payers have received a refund of their donations, as promised by the BID company, so why not ask the businesses of Dartmouth to donate 50 per cent of their refunds to the Mayflower 400 project.

I suspect they have already written it off and it is, after all, where they wanted the money spent in the five-year business plan, so it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

If the total refund amounts to £60,000, then 50 per cent will give Mayflower £30,000 up front. I suggest it sets up a crowdfunding site so that ­businesses can donate to it when their refunds arrive.

I understand from your report, Chronicle, October 21, that this funding will be used in part to develop a website for the Mayflower project.

First, why not develop a Dartmouth section for the ­existing Mayflower project website that already exists?

Alternatively, if we want a Dartmouth-only Mayflower 400 site, why not utilise the BID website, which is still active, and modify the content to suit the Mayflower? It is a Wordpress-based website that makes it easy to redesign with new content at very little cost.

The BID site already ­contains a lot of information about Dartmouth that could be used to promote the town and its businesses at the same time as supporting the Mayflower ­digital marketing campaign. This would reduce the cost ­significantly, provided that the Mayflower team has already registered an appropriate URL for the site. There are many Wordpress experts in town.

Finally, I am seriously ­concerned that the Mayflower committee members may believe that developing a website is enough. Of course it isn’t – and in my opinion the failure of the BID is significantly down to the BID board not appreciating the importance of modern digital marketing methods in the marketing mix when trying to raise the profile of a brand. What you do to drive traffic to your site matters more than developing a ­website, otherwise it will be a wasted resource.

Today the Dartmouth Mayflower 400 project is almost invisible on the internet. If

you Google ‘Mayflower 400’, Dartmouth is mentioned on the Plymouth-based master website, but Dartmouth has very little unique material on the site, and I guess it has no online access to the site.

The master site has also been developed using a proprietary CMS, just like the Dartmouth Tourist Information Centre’s site Discover Dartmouth, which means it is tied to the supplier for the purposes of maintaining the site.

There needs to be an ­effective Mayflower 400 digital marketing strategy in place Asap, otherwise Dartmouth will miss out on this great opportunity. That will require more funding than it has asked for so far in order to start pay-per-click advertising, but some activities require time only.

The use of Facebook and Twitter to raise the profile of Dartmouth’s Mayflower events is critical – and also free.

I would be happy to help the Mayflower 400 group develop that strategy if it needs it, so I am offering my time to help whenever needed.

Dartmouth has already ­wasted a great opportunity with the BID; please don’t let that happen to the Mayflower 400 project as well. It should be a great boost to the town, which is much needed.