A grassroots social media campaign created to drum up support for drought-affected small businesses injected more than $5 million into local economies in just four months, a report has found.
The Buy from the Bush campaign was launched in October 2019 and aimed at helping small businesses in eastern Australia to promote their services and products, many of which were dealing with the flow-on effects from three years of drought.
The report commissioned by the campaign's organisers and Facebook Australia revealed on average each business featured in the campaign recorded a "300 per cent sales uplift".
In the first four months of the campaign, 275 businesses, mainly in eastern Australia, featured on the Buy from the Bush social media channels on Facebook and Instagram, which encouraged consumers to engage directly with the respective businesses.
The economic impact evaluation by AlphaBeta Australia found 97pc of businesses featured in the campaign were owned by women, of which, many were located in bushfire-hit communities in places such as north-east Victoria and eastern NSW.
Eighty per cent of businesses were located in NSW while Victoria, SA, Queensland and Western Australia accounted for the remaining 20pc.
The campaign had a positive effect on small businesses in regional areas in five key ways, including "revenue, market access, employment opportunities, entrepreneur empowerment and well-being".
Farmers helped
During the height of the drought, sheep farmers Annabelle and Dom Kennedy, Nyngan, NSW, relied on income from Kennedy the Label, a clothing and lifestyle business launched in 2017 as something to "work on in the background".
Their 16,000-hectare property was in the midst of one of its worst droughts in generations when Kennedy the Label's Christmas sales generated $30,000 - a fourfold year-on-year increase - after being featured on Buy from the Bush.
"[It] came at the most incredible time," Mrs Kennedy said.
"We had already seen the closure of most small retail outlets in our town and were facing another Christmas period in an economy where there wasn't anything around."
Regional areas reopen
In north-east Victoria, businesses are slowly starting to re-open after first being hit with devastating fires in January and then forced to close due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Tourism North East chief executive Bess Nolan-Cook said businesses were remaining "cautiously optimistic" as they reopened their doors.
"We've seen extraordinary financial losses across the north-east and recovery is going to be long and complex," Ms Nolan-Cook said.
"With limited interstate and international travel, certainly there's opportunities for the tourism sector within Victoria to potentially see visitors that they wouldn't otherwise normally and we've seen some great stories of businesses doing innovative things during this time."
Economic modelling commissioned by the tourism body after the bushfires - and before the pandemic - estimated tourism operators lost between $183-$208 million in the first quarter of 2020.
She said it was too early to put a figure on the economic loss during COVID-19.
"Businesses are trying to operate in what is a fundamentally new normal so we're just encouraging visitors to play it safe, be kind and plan ahead," Ms Nolan-Cook said.
"If people do decide to travel to the region, then we ask this is done in a considerate manner and that they don't travel if they're unwell and be respectful of the communities they do visit."
"The accommodation sector for example has nowhere to go and the only thing that will help them improve is to have bums in beds so we look forward to people returning to our region."