For Business Improvement Districts
Show your levy-payers the noise their fee creates.
Press Pilot turns BID-funded activity, events and member wins into visible press coverage, so when the ballot comes round, the evidence is already on the page and the renewal pitch writes itself.
The BID shape
A small team, a long levy-payer list, and a ballot on the horizon.
You're funded by the businesses you serve, and judged by them every few years. Press Pilot is the engine room that proves the money turned into noise, footfall and coverage they can point at.
Ballot-ready evidence
Every piece of coverage attributed to BID-funded activity. The renewal narrative writes itself out of the data.
Levy-payer dashboards
Each business sees their own coverage, mentions and reach. Transparency, not a quarterly PDF chase.
Event amplification
Pop-ups, late-night openings, Christmas lights, seasonal trails - pitched, scheduled and tracked from one place.
Town-centre press, done right
Our journalist database is heavy on regional dailies, hospitality trades and consumer titles who actually cover the high street.
Footfall in context
Pair coverage with footfall data so the board sees the lift, not just the clipping.
Multi-stakeholder reporting
Council, board, levy-payers, partners - each gets the cut they need without you rebuilding the deck.
Ballot maths
What the levy bought, in three numbers.
- 01Coverage value across the year, broken down by campaign and by levy-payer.
- 02Share-of-voice for the town centre vs. comparable BIDs in your region.
- 03Footfall correlation against the campaigns Press Pilot pitched.
The BID reality
Every pound of levy has to be visible - and most of it isn't.
BIDs live and die on perception. The levy is a recurring invoice in a small business's inbox, and the renewal ballot is a yes-or-no question from people who don't always see what they're paying for. The work happens - the cleaning shifts, the seasonal lights, the late-night economy support, the markets, the lobbying - but the story of that work rarely lands where the levy-payer can see it.
Press Pilot is built to close that gap. Every campaign, event and member win flows through one system that pitches it to the regional and trade press that actually cover the high street, then credits the coverage back to the BID, the levy-payer and the campaign that produced it. When the ballot pack lands on a member's desk, the evidence is already on their dashboard.
"By renewal year, the data is doing the talking. We're not pitching the BID, we're handing them the receipts."
A day in the life
A Tuesday in BID-land with James, Operations Director.
James runs a town-centre BID with around 380 levy-payers, two staff and a ballot eighteen months out. Tuesday is his outward-facing day.
07.45
Walks the high street on the way in. Notes two new openings, a window-display refresh, a vacant unit now under offer. Voice-notes straight into Press Pilot - the AI turns them into three draft story leads by the time he's at his desk.
09.15
Reviews the leads, approves two for pitching: the new opening to the regional daily and lifestyle press, the unit takeup to the property trade. The third gets parked for the Christmas lights campaign.
11.00
Ambassador team submits last weekend's footfall numbers through the levy-payer portal. Press Pilot pairs them with the late-night opening coverage from a fortnight ago. The lift is obvious. James queues a story for the council comms lead.
13.30
Board call. James shares his screen - live share-of-voice vs. the neighbouring BID, top five levy-payers by coverage this quarter, the three campaigns the data says to double down on. Twelve minutes, no slides.
15.00
Member walkaround. A café owner asks what the BID's actually done for her this year. James opens her dashboard on his phone: four mentions, two of them in the regional daily, one in a national listings round-up. She didn't know.
16.40
Pulls the quarterly ballot-evidence pack. It's the same data she just saw, rolled up for all 380 members. The renewal narrative is writing itself, one Tuesday at a time.
Make the BID case in coverage, not slides.
A 30-minute demo, tailored to your organisation. No slideware. We'll use your real partner list and show you what week one would actually look like.
Book a demoOr read the 30-day plan before you commit.