Top 3 Ways Economic Developers Can Promote Their Regions

December 21, 2016 | 3 minute read

Gathering and cultivating the interest of your target audiences requires forethought and due process. If you do the necessary legwork before your economic development marketing campaign, you simplify the next stage and lend yourself credibility in the eyes of your audience. There are ways economic developers can promote their regions keeping in mind what problems need to be solved and how they're prepared to solve them for their clients.

Key Actions To Attract Investors To Your Economic Development Region

1. Educate - Educate yourself to attract investors and site selectors.
An effective web content strategy is dependent on thorough knowledge of your target audience. For economic developers, this is primarily local business and potential investors—both should feature equally on your website if you’re not to miss out on future relationships. If your particular target audience extends beyond these parties make a point of knowing why they come to your site, what they are looking for, and how they interpret the information given.

Don’t forget—the way you present your information may be easily digestible for one target audience, but may need reworking for another.

2. Enlighten - your investors through clear communication of worthwhile content, timed appropriately.
Don’t underestimate the value of standing relationships with local business in your marketing efforts. These links provide an essential foundation for further growth and should be addressed alongside (not neglected in) the pursuit of new business.

Content first, design to follow is another way economic developers can promote their regions.

A content strategy focused on effective communication is the foundation in which quality design takes root. Coupled with Information Architecture optimized for the consumer, it will produce an attractive, user-friendly website worth revisiting.
3. Engage - engage your audience through organized marketing.
Only by placing yourself in your target audiences shoes can you develop a strategy truly tailored to their needs. An email marketing campaign is one way to achieve an engaged readership not through generalized email blasts, but attentiveness to individual reader interest. You can segment newsletters according to audience type and interests. Engagement can across across your online content from blog comments to social media sharing, even surveys.
Know who wants what and when, then satisfy those needs.
If you deliver only what has been asked for, or shown interest in, you demonstrate respect for businesses and investors, and your efforts are more likely to avoid the junk folder.