Starting with the Basics: Know Your Community

It is important to assess community civic capacity to create a vision, plan, effective leadership, and the partnerships that can help you implement an effective marketing program. Be inclusive when you are communicating with citizens of your community. Gaining their understanding and support of your marketing efforts is essential for your plan to move forward.

What do community members expect? Open and shared agendas, positive and visible contributions, participation, pride, trust and reliability.

Examples of communication strategies can include:

1. Hosting community events as an opportunity to share your message
2. Recruiting, training and mobilizing volunteers to assist in your marketing efforts
3. Networking regularly with various members of your community
4. Sharing local stories, make certain the people in the stories are comfortable with you sharing their information, particularly if they are referred to by name
5. Including quotes or testimonials from satisfied businesses or other community members in brochures or newsletters is very powerful becuase it adds a human connection and can make issues easier to understand
6. Submitting Op-Eds, which are opinion pieces submitted to newspapers by community members. They are usually located close to the editorial section and can also be effective.

A structured economic analysis of your community is needed for a community to realize it’s potential, strengths and weaknesses. Such an analysis is useful when examining the economic makeup of an area and how that area responds to internal and external forces. An economic analysis and strategic economic development plan provide the framework to address specific issues, i.e. target industries and employment dependencies on one or two businesses.

Understanding basic economic and demographic data is an important component of the process. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, www.bea.gov Bureau of the Census www.census.gov and the Bureau of Labor Statistics www.bls.gov are widely used sources of secondary economic data. In addition, the Idaho Department of Labor provides excellent workforce and population data at http://lmi.idaho.gov 

There is also, demographic, consumer expenditure, business and workforce, and Geographic Information Systems data available on Gem State Prospector, www.gemstateprospector.com. Finally, you can find information available on our web site at http://commerce.idaho.gov/business/economic-indicators/.

Know your target audience and the criteria considered when making location decisions. See your product through the customer’s eyes from start to finish. The world is rapidly changing and what communities are doing to stay competitive is changing with it. Community leaders must be savvy of the needs of their target audience to even be considered in their decision process. The types of marketing activities that have worked in the past may no longer be effective. Develop and evaluate a marketing program in terms of the best Return on Investment for today’s market. Determining the needs of each industry you are targeting will require some research, but will be invaluable in achieving your marketing goals. What are their transportation and infrastructure needs? What kind of life style do they want for themselves and their employees? What incentives can you offer?

Area Development Magazine* conducts a corporate survey every year. Survey results showed the top ten rankings, by importance, for site selection are:

Site Selection Factor	% of Respondents
Highway Accessibility	97.3 %
Labor Costs	91 %
Tax Excemptions	90.9 %
Occupancy or Construction Costs	89.8 %
State and Local Incentives	89.3 %
Corporate Tax Rate	86.3 %
Availability of Skilld Labor	85.9 %
Inbound/Outbound Shipping Costs	84 %
Energy Availability and Costs	82.1 %
Availability of Buildings	81 %

While this is only one source of what site selection decision makers are looking for, it is consistent with what other surveys have found. Cost control is prevalent in the top ten ranked site selection factors. Tighter budgets and more choices with equal services and talent can lead to a situation where cost is the only metric decision makers can exercise control over.

For a full list of rankings and analysis of this survey, go to Area Development Magazine's 25th Annual Corporate Survey. Area Development Magazine has conducted the survey for 25 years and reveals an interesting comparison of rankings and analysis over time.

Defining the community product(s) and the message you wish to convey will require an organized, innovative and cohesive group of local stakeholders who can mobilize available resources. Getting the right people together early on is extremely important.

1. Ask what differentiaties your community from others. What does it have that will capture the interest of site selectors, tourists or new residents you want to attract?
2. What is compatible with your community history, identity or culture? What industires does your community want and what can it successfully support?
3. If your community already has a marketing program, evaluate the results you are getting. Where does your target audience get their information? Who do they trust? What are their needs? What environmental issues might impact your marketing message? What are you doing that's working? What is not working? What can you do to be more competitive? Who are you competing with?  A marketing image has to be simple, believable, distinctive and appeal to the target audience.
4. Remember your local colleges or universities, Small Business Development Centers, and Small Business Administration can be very helpful in researching needed data and providing marketing assistance through their business assistance programs.
5. Understand your competition and the messages they are sending to get your target audiences' attention. Remember target industry selection criteria for businesses is a match between the location needs of the business and what the community has to offer, i.e. skill levels, wages, growth and diversification potential, etc.
6. Make sure everyone in your collaborative group is prepared to articulate your group's message(s) with passion and conviction.  This includes everyone answering phones and responding to inquiries. Customer service empowered employees and volunteers can make a difference in whether or not you get a second call.  Since you never know when an inquiry may be important, make sure your people take these inquiries very serioursly. See each call as a potential golden opportunity for a lead.  Responses should be quick and any material you mail must be professional and accurate.
7. Take an aggressive position and make something happen and be sure to follow up as soon as you have a lead.