This document provides tips for effective economic development marketing. It begins with establishing basic principles like serving companies directly and having conversations. It then lists 8 tips to get communities noticed today, such as getting found online through search engine optimization and social media, developing dynamic content, and embracing new technologies like virtual and augmented reality. The document aims to help economic developers market their communities more effectively with limited budgets.

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Economic
Development
Marketing From Good
to Great:
8 Economic Development
Marketing Tips to Get Your
Community Noticed Today

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We are Atlas Advertising
And we do things like this…

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Tucson concepting

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Campaign
development.
Positioning.

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Screen shot of Jobs Ohio Promotion of Atlas developed
GIS mapping tool, easily view able on IPad devices

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And we’re passionate about
things like…

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“If I thought for a minute that I
could get the same product in
the end, even for a higher price,
by going local, I would have
done it,” Downs said last week.
“I have no interest in sending
money away to Denver except
to get the best product.”
-Timothy Downs, CEO City of Dayton Office of
Economic Development

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“Atlas Advertising is the Exclusive
High Performance Economic Development
Marketing Firm of IEDC”
Jeff Finkle, President/ CEO
IEDC

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And this…

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THEN..

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NOW…

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All because…

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Featured Clients:
43+
STATES
120+
Communities
WE BELIEVE THAT ECONOMIC
DEVELOPERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE….
1
MISSION - ‘To Create Vital Communities’
6
COUNTIES

27. Insert CTA Header
Download this presentation
and others at:
http://atlas-advertising.com/community-marketing-
presentations.aspx

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Meeting Agenda
1. A Formative Idea for Today’s Session
2. What are the basic principles that should drive your economic
development marketing?
– What should our marketing, job creation, and capital investment objectives be?
– How will we know if we are successful?
– What are the best communities doing to succeed?
– How can we be more relevant to our investors, boards, and stakeholders?
3. What are 8 Tips that we can implement to get our communities
noticed today?
4. Benchmarking Opportunity

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Formative Idea for Today’s Session
”Prospects (Site Selectors,
Companies, Talent) are now in control
of when and how they access
information during the purchase
process. At the same time, Economic
Developers are constrained by tight
budgets while charged with longer to-do
lists, including the need to interact with
board’s, stakeholders and customers
across a variety of marketing, political,
financial and infrastructure channels. And
at the end of the day, Economic
Developers are more accountable than
ever for results”

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A few principles that drive
(or should drive)
economic development

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What worked 20-50 years ago is
not the same as what
works today.

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What hasn’t changed:
To make a difference, we have to serve
companies directly.
If we are not having conversations,
we are not making a difference.

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Economic Development is a
Spectrum of Activities

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The Framework

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Insert CTA Header
8 TIPS TO GET YOUR
COMMUNITY NOTICED TODAY

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GET FOUND ONLINE
• Google has evolved from a 1996 research project into the world’s
most visited website with more than five billion searches every day.
Providing the most relevant search results to users fuels its massive
growth.
• 90% of the Site Selection process starts online

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EFFECTIVE SEARCH
MARKETING
• Ranking #1 organically
for “your city/region
economic development”
• Ranking #1 organically
for “your organization
name”
• Utilizing paid search
(PPC) to drive additional
traffic

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Top 10 search terms that drive
traffic to ED websites
1. Your organization name
2. Your city/region name “economic development”
3. Incentive type offered in your region (depends on community)
4. Resident company name (i.e., Boeing)
5. Region name (if different from city)
6. Organizational url (without .com/.net/.org)
7. Campaign name (initiative or fundraising)
8. City/region name “maps”
9. City/region name “counties”
10. City/region name “industries”

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REMEMBER WRITING FOR THE
WEB IS JUST DIFFERENT
Most people scan content online.
Make your content engaging and
easy to ready by:
• Breaking information into sections
• Using bulleted list
• Bolding text to emphasize key points
• Writing shorter paragraphs
• Employing subheads (h2 and h3)
• Leaving out the buzzwords and the
jargon

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GOT SITES & BUILDINGS?

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GIS Content on Economic
Development Websites
Existing Building
Critical Search Fields
City
County
Minimum Square Feet
Maximum Square Feet
Minimum Clear Height
Minimum Column Spacing
Sale, Lease, Both
Building Type (i.e., Industrial, R&D, Commercial, etc.)
Specialty Feature (i.e., Call Center, Clean Room, Cold
Storage, Data Center, etc.)
Zoning
Cranes
Docks
Rail (preferred/required)
Max Distance to:
- Interstate
- 4-Laned Highway
- Commercial Airport
Previous Use
Land
Critical Search Fields
City
County
Minimum Acres
Maximum Acres
Site Zoning
Rail Proximity
Max Distance to:
- Interstate
- 4-Laned Highway
- Commercial Airport
Brownfield or Greenfield
• Concerning GIS content, critical applications include:
– Interactive Property Search Maps
– Interactive Demographics & Major Employer Plots
– Downloadable Shapefiles (.shp) for use in mapping
software
• To provide better service to the corporate site seeker, the
following guidelines are suggested for economic
development organization websites:

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GIS Content on Economic
Development Websites
Base Layer
Menu
County Boundary
Streets
Airport Runways , Noise Contours, Property Lines
Subdivisions
Zoning Boundaries
Parcels
Zip Codes
Rivers
Forest / Preserved Areas
Flood Plains
Elevation (10 ft and 2 ft contours)
Future Land Use
Color Aerials
City/Municipal Boundaries
Schools (including colleges)
Rail (yards, spurs, main lines)
Utilities (to the extent available)
Future Land Use
Submenu
Business Park
Commercial
Developmentally Sensitive
Hydrology
High Suburban Density
Industrial
Public / Institutional
Recreation
Rural Density
Rural Land
Suburban Residential
Transportation
Urban Density
• Baseline content that would facilitate an interactive GIS platform should include the
following “activateable” menus:

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DROP YOUR CARD WITH ME TO
ENTER TO WIN A FREE LOCAL
VERSION OF TVASITES.COM

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DEVELOP A
POSTIONING
STATEMENT

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AN EXAMPLE

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AN EXAMPLE

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YOUR WEBSITE IS YOU ONLINE
• Your website is an outreach of your community—think of how
you extend in-person greetings to your prospects, and try, as
hard as you can, to deliver that message and tone online
• Your site is not static, it’s living and breathing—it takes
incredible attention and detail, but it will deliver incredible
results
• Your site is your platform—for first impressions, for
storytelling, for capturing attention and most importantly for
starting a conversation

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WEBSITES FOR STORY TELLING

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WEBSITES FOR DATA

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Top 10 pages requested nationally
on ED websites
1. About Us (about the organization)
2. Programs (that the organization offers)
3. Data Center
4. News
5. Relocate and Expand
6. Find Property
7. Site Selection Services
8. Workforce Data and Information
9. Database of Companies or Largest Employers
10. Maps of the Area

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BUILD DYNAMIC CONTENT
• Dynamic content is content that caters specifically to the viewer,
letting you provide relevant information whether they’re a prospect,
lead, or even a internal stakeholder. As a result, it provides the
opportunity for you to be a champion of “context” — providing the
right content at the right time.
• 144.8 billion - that’s the number of emails sent every day, according
to Mashable.
• Businesses that regularly blog receive 55% more web traffic and
70% more leads than those that don’t. Why? Because blogs are like
chum for Google and other search engines. They’re the bait that
reels in customers when they’re searching the Web

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HOW ONE EDO DOES IT.

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EMBRACE NEW TECHNOLOGY
• In today’s globalized world there is little that can’t be made more
efficient through the use of powerful technology.

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EMBRACE NEW TECHNOLOGY

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Use LinkedIn Ads For Targeting
Company Audiences

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KNOXVILLE ESTIMATED REACH
3Million
TARGET USERS BY TITLE,
GEOGRAPHY, GROUP
AND MORE

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PLEASE, MARKET TO YOUR
WORKFORCE.

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40% percent of workers plan to look for a new job within the next 6
months with 69% using social media to do it.
Source: 2013 Ranstad Staffing Study

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Get the report:
http://www.slideshare.net/wright04
05/atlas-high-performance-
economic-development-white-paper
Take the survey to
participate:
http://atlas-
advertising.com/Community-
Benchmarking-Study.aspx
BENCHMARK YOUR
PERFORMANCE TODAY

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THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OLYMPICS.
Philadelphia, PA| Oct. 6-9, 2013
Click here to learn more:
http://blog.atlas-advertising.com/?p=3382

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“When [what you are deeply
passionate about, what you can be
best in the world at and what drives
your economic engine] come together,
not only does your work move toward
greatness, but so does your life.
- Jim Collins
BE GREAT NOT GOOD

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Questions

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Thank you!
Contact information:
1128 Grant St.
Denver, CO 80205
Contact: Guillermo Mazier
t: 303.292.3300 x 232
Guillermom@Atlas-Advertising.com
www.Atlas-Advertising.com
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