Five Steps to Create a Digital Economic Development Organization
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The document outlines five steps for establishing a digital economic development organization (EDO) and highlights key marketing dysfunctions that hinder economic growth. It emphasizes the need for transparency and self-service information in modern marketing, as well as the importance of a strong digital identity and effective online presence. Furthermore, it advises against outdated practices and encourages a fresh approach through strategic use of technology and data in economic development efforts.
Five Steps to Create a Digital Economic Development Organization
- 1. 5 Steps to Create a Digital Economic Development Organization Anatalio Ubalde CEO & Co-Founder GISplanning.com ZoomProspector.com LBI.SizeUp.com
- 2. 3 contextual dysfunctions of economic development organization marketing
- 3. Dysfunction 1: Creative marketing lies and trickery feel fun (if you enjoy being manipulative) but they don’t work well because the Internet exists.
- 5. Managing Expectations • No - drinking beer does not make you good looking and create lots of friends. (It gave me a beer belly). • Economic developers have tried this approach too. And it leads to a lot worse than a hangover for the business.
- 6. Revealing your real advantages • Don’t try to trick people with promises you can’t consistently deliver. They will discover your lies. • Do reveal the opportunities of your community that help the business succeed in the long-term. Allow your marketing to be communication that educates. • The Internet makes it difficult to trick people because they all have access to so much information. Instead, the Internet is great for teaching and learning.
- 7. Dysfunction 2: Living in the past
- 8. Past > Present > Future
- 9. We We don’t all live in the present Past Present Future
- 10. Marketing & Communications (Old Way) Advertising Brochures Site selection information Meeting Businesses Direct Mail Familiarization Tours Special Events Newsletters E-mail Media & Public Relations Telemarketing Website Videos (VHS or DVD) Press Releases Trade Shows
- 11. Econ. Dev. Moves from Offline to Online Offline Online News Releases Meeting Businesses Special Events Familiarization Tours E-mail Newsletters Advertising Videos Brochures Website Site selection GIS assistance Media & Public Relations Trade Shows Blog Social Media Telemarketing Direct Mail
- 12. What do these have in common?
- 13. Anatalio’s new models for economic development Role Old New Information Gatekeeper Distributor Relationship Broker Connector Technical Assistance Bureaucrat Enabler Process Convoluted Transparent Efficiency Marketing Say it Be it Economic Developer Middleman Leader © GIS Planning Inc.
- 15. Choices • Stay the course = irrelevance • Reinvent = give it away so they come to you
- 16. Dysfunction 3: Withholding information gets you killed online and offline
- 17. The way of the dinosaur • “I don’t publicly give out information about my community because businesses need to call me so I can explain it to them.”
- 19. Creating an EDO Office Give yourself a name and get a place to do business Figure out and explain what your have to sell Market what you have to sell. Implement programs to help your customers Expand your success to reach more customers Creating an EDO Website Give yourself a name and get a place to do business Figure out and explain what your have to sell Market what you have to sell. Implement programs to help your customers Expand your success to reach more customers
- 20. For getting new customers your website is as important as your non-digital presence. In the near future (or already) it will be more important. The same goes for business loyalty/retention.
- 21. What do these have in common?
- 22. Are you a self-serve EDO? “Today’s decision-makers want self-serve information. If someone has to call you or email you for information about our organization and your destination you’re doing it wrong. Today’s business relocation and expansion or wants as much information as possible in a self-serve capacity. They want to diagnose and digest this information themselves right off your website and other places across the Internet.” - Jay Baer author of the New York Times’ best-selling book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype
- 23. Decision Made 70% Before I talk to you After I talk to you
- 24. Stop hassling me. “70%, on average, of the purchase decision has been made before a business-to-business customer ever even contacts the company. And that decision is made based on self-serve information. You know this to be true. Every person has been on a website and been interested in a product or service but purposefully did not contact the company – did not fill out a form – because they did not want to be hassled by someone. They didn’t want to be contacted. That trend is going to continue.” - Jay Baer author of the New York Times’ best-selling book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype
- 26. Common mistake • Make your website in the image of your organizational structure. • You customers don’t care about your internal structure. Focus on what your customers care about. • How do you like to interact with companies? • Rethink this organizational approach with your digital presence. • How is your EDO like a website?
- 27. The Digital EDO Questions: • Is your website a representation of your EDO? • Should you be thinking about your EDO in the way that people think about a website? (Yes) • In a global economy can you risk not having a website that is your EDO? • Will your digital interactions be greater than your personal interactions? (Hint: they already are). • Are you allocating your focus on the greatest value? • If you were to start all over (note: you can’t, but you can remake yourselves), how would you build a digital EDO?
- 28. 5 Steps to a Digital EDO
- 30. Step 1: Name/Naming • Everyone starts with a name. • With a company this is where they register their domain name. • With an EDO it’s where they come up with their organizational name and their domain name. • This step is mostly only valuable in that it gets the process started. By itself it’s useless.
- 31. West Point, MS Standard
- 32. Domain Names • Government Standard – City – www.ci.indianapolis.in.us – County – www.co.solano.ca.us – State – www.state.md.us • Non-standard – www.newlondonwi.org – www.burlesontx.com – www.peachtreecitygeorgia.com
- 33. Aliasing The City of Boston, Massachusetts www.boston.org www.cityofboston.gov www.ci.boston.ma.us
- 34. New reality: One website is not enough
- 35. Microsites
- 37. Ecosystem networks are the most valuable web presence This skips ahead to Step 3 but is worth mentioning here. You must be discoverable and on the online platforms your customers are on. It’s no longer about your ONE website; it’s about getting customers to your EDO. Your EDO Business Media Social Networks CRE Federal agencies FDI Nat’l site selection portal Micro-websites Mobile Advertising
- 38. Step 2: Digital Identity
- 39. Step 2: Website/Digital Identity • Your website is where you show who you are, what you have to offer, and why people should buy from you. • There are other ways to represent your identity but none matter more than digital for introducing you to your customers because online is where they are doing research. (see next slide).
- 40. When would you first contact an EDO? (contact staff vs. visit website) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% When beginning an initial site selection search for possible locations When developing a long-list of possible areas in which to locate based on restrictive-criteria During evaluation/analysis of a long-list of locations After narrowing options to a short-list of a few finalists During evaluation/analysis of a short-list of locations To confirm information I have already gathered Only if the company or client specifically asked me to contact an EDO. Never Contact an EDO Visit an EDO's website
- 41. The Step 2 Mistakes • EDOs think they are done at step 2. • They then go back to Step 1 and do step 2 again. Or they just keep redoing step 2. • This is a common dysfunction of EDOs. Step 1 Step 2 The circle of death
- 42. Step 2 Mistakes • This is an incredibly common dysfunction of EDOs. • They think that their lack of success comes from their name and identity so they keep working on these or try to redo these. • And there are ED vendor agencies that make a lot of money by EDC misleading of Fairfield EDOs County that this is their problem and to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep working on these steps when Fairfield Economic Development Corporation what the EDO really needs to do is move to the next steps.
- 43. Step 2 Mistakes • This is an incredibly common dysfunction of EDOs. • They think that their lack of success comes from their name and identity so they keep working on these or try to redo these. • And there are ED vendor agencies that make a lot of money by misleading EDOs that this is their problem and to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep working on these steps when what the EDO really needs to do is move to the next steps.
- 44. How EDOs self sabotage their own organizations
- 45. How EDOs talk themselves into this misconception • Doing this is seductive because it focuses energy on things that feel creative and which can be outsourced to so-called experts. • If changing your economy was as simple as changing your name or deciding you have a different identity then ED wouldn’t be very hard at all. • But this is one of the big lies that people tell themselves in ED and which is reinforced by the vendors that sell this malarkey to the EDOs. • This is not a best practice; it is a worst practice.
- 49. When you lose your name “The loss of value through rebranding a community is especially important if the Internet’s power matters for your community success, and economic developers know it is extremely valuable. As best selling author and WIRED Editor-In-Chief, Chris Anderson says, “Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is.” Because rebranding involves disassociating yourself with your existing brand, you also lose all your “Google Juice” from your online identity and the existing value of search engine optimization. And if your organization has been around a long time, that means you will lose a lot.” Source: http://www.gisplanning.com/_blog/GIS_Planning_Blog/post/hoax_rebranding_communities/#sthash.9VDuiSd3.dpuf
- 50. 6 months and $111,000 later http://gazette.com/article/128953
- 54. One last thing to consider on this topic “You can’t win as a brand marketer. You can only win as a data marketer.” - Darian Shirazi, Founder and CEO, Radius (Early and youngest Facebook employee)
- 55. Data for Economic Development Websites
- 56. What your colleagues have Have Will implement in 2-5 years 22% 56% 50% 44% 36% 38% 18% 50% 93% 84% 79% 83% 77% 79% 76% 79% 73% 69% 64% 67% 65% 77% 89% 27% 27% 19% 49% 28% 32% 23% 28% 18% 15% 14% 13% 7% 13% 10% 12% 15% 10% 16% 9% 6% 10% 3% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Staff directory and contact information (phone, fax, email, address) Hyperlinks to other organizations Demographic reports Maps Quality of life (climate, schools, housing, culture, healthcare, etc.) Infrastructure (utilities and transportation) Major employers Land/sites and buildings inventory News about community (past or present) Labor force (availability and wages) Incentives Major industries or business/industry clusters Social media integration Business assistance services/how to start a business Employment training programs Business list Testimonials and success stories GIS mapping tools for site selection analysis assistance Videos Formatting option for mobile devices/mobile apps Comparisons to other areas Transactions (business licenses, permit applications, etc.) User-generated content (blogs, forums) Source: National Survey of Economic Developers, GIS Planning Inc. 2012
- 57. Most important features on an ED website? 24% 33% 60% 60% 53% 51% 48% 55% 91% 90% 86% 85% 83% 81% 80% 77% 73% 70% 67% 67% 74% 83% 91% Land/sites and buildings inventory Labor force (availability and wages) Demographic reports Infrastructure (utilities and transportation) Maps Major industries or business/industry clusters Staff directory and contact information (phone, fax, email,… Incentives Major employers GIS mapping tools for site selection analysis assistance Business assistance services/how to start a business Quality of life (climate, schools, housing, culture, healthcare,… Employment training programs Testimonials and success stories Hyperlinks to other organizations News about community (past or present) Social media integration Comparisons to other areas Business list Formatting option for mobile devices/mobile apps Transactions (business licenses, permit applications, etc.) Videos User-generated content (blogs, forums) Source: National Survey of Economic Developers, GIS Planning Inc. 2012
- 58. Step 3: Marketing/ Discovery Marketing/ Sale
- 59. Step 3: Marketing/Discovery Marketing/Sale • Once a business has their digital identity represented on their website the next step is to market their company through apps, social, listings, reviews, SEO and SEM.
- 60. You can have a great product or service but if no one knows about it no one is going to buy. In economic development the same is true.
- 61. Interruption Marketing Getting people to your website through advertising
- 62. Georgia EMC Good: Very, very clear
- 63. SEO & SEM Very briefly
- 64. Top 5 Search Engines April 2014 Search Engine Market Share Google 67.6% Microsoft 18.7% Yahoo! 10.0% Ask 2.4% AOL 1.3% Source: comScore.com April 2013
- 66. SEO the Google Way • Content is Key – Be engaging – Use important keywords – Keep up-to-date • Use Webmaster Tools (www.google.com/webmasters) – Find out how Google sees your site – Sign up for alerts – Tell Google about your site • SEO is incremental – it takes time • SEO is important but design for humans Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013
- 67. 5 things to do to improve your SEO according to #1 - Add a blog - Creating compelling and useful content can help your website more than any other factor. Write easy-to-read text • Spelling and grammer errors looks unprofesional. • Format text in paragraphs with heading and subheadings. Create content primarily for humans, not search engines • Avoid inserting unnecessary keywords. • Don’t hide text from humans but display it to search engines Keyword research • What words and phrases do people search for? Be sure to include them when writing website copy. Use Google Trends, AdWords, and Analytics to find keywords. Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013 That’s a joke obsessive people
- 68. 5 things to do to improve your SEO according to #2 –Write Unique Title Pages Describes page to humans and search engines. In search results title usually displays in the first line. Words in title are automatically bolded if in search query. Avoid lengthy titles – 70 character max Don’t keyword stuff Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013 Bad
- 69. 5 things to do to improve your SEO according to #3 –Write Unique Page Descriptions • The description meta tag is a web page summary. • Search engines may use it as a "snippet” displayed beneath the page title on a search results page. • Words in snippet are bolded if they appear in the search query Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013
- 70. 5 things to do to improve your SEO according to #4 –Write Meaningful Anchor Text • Anchor text is the clickable text that humans see in a link. • Make it easy to navigate and understand pages. • Avoid writing generic anchor text like "article” or "click here.” • Avoid using off-topic anchor text. • Use words or phrases, not sentences or paragraphs. • Don’t stuff extra keywords into anchor text. • Make it easy to distinguish links from regular text. Use the underline. Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013
- 71. 5 things to do to improve your SEO according to #5 – Optimize Images • Use the "alt" attribute. • This shows descriptive text if image cannot be displayed. • Avoid writing excessively long alt text. • Avoid generic filenames like "image1.jpg.” • Avoid extremely lengthy filenames. • Don’t stuff keywords or sentences into alt text. • Don’t use only image links for your site’s navigation. • Consolidate images into a single website directory. Source: Google GYBO Training 9/2013
- 72. Online Advertising Revenue Growth Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers/Interactive Advertising Bureau
- 73. Not enough time. Want more information? • SEO • SEM • Keywords • Email campaigns • Economic development webinars on these topics at www.vimeo.com/gisplanning
- 74. Step 3 Mistake #1 • The old way of marketing was to get people’s attention so that you could (typically personally) sell them. This is an incorrect and disconnected approach that isn’t consistent with the best way to lead to a sale/investment. • The new way of marketing is your marketing creates the sale.
- 75. Step 3 Mistake #2 • EDOs focus their marketing money on the wrong things and don’t understand how digital marketing has changed in just the last few years. • They continue to do ED using a 1990s mentality even though the marketing world doesn’t work that way anymore and therefore all the old marketing practices will deliver deficient results.
- 76. Choices: A. DIY B. Site Selector C. EDO 2. EDO tries to get biz to consider them The old way of economic development 1. Business has a relocation need Hey, there are plenty of other locations. 3. Discovery/Eval uation How am I going to get biz investment? 4. Intent – Due diligence & details 5. Purchase/Inve stment Many EDOs hand off here 6. Loyalty – reinvest or stay
- 77. The new way of economic development 2. Discovery Choices: A. Site Selector B. EDO C. DIY (always) 1. Business has a relocation need EDO: Targets when Biz has a need SEO SEM Assist. Ecosystems Social Media Listings Reviews Biz Intel. & Predict Internal web metric Targeted Matchmaking conferences Biz: Searches for + evaluates community fit. Online research (greater emphasis now) Search Portals Social Media Reviews EDOs Advisors: RE agent, site selectors, peers 3. Purchase/Investment Integrated Attraction + retention + expansion partnership > Good biz experience > Good WofMouth + recommendation s online > Back to Step #2 Resell Still doing discovery but with different content and tools (e.g. LBI) SEO SEM Ecosystem Social Media Listings Review Reinvestment & Discovery of new benefits, products, services The moment of relevance © GIS Planning 2014: Not for use or reuse without specific permission
- 78. Step 3 concepts summary (so far) • The Internet, which includes your website and all of your other presences online, is the place where you convert tire-kickers into customers. It is where you move them from discovery to evaluation to investment action. • Few EDOs have a mobile, social, listings, review, SEO and SEM strategy. Those that do or will, will meaningfully out-perform their competition. • Discovery Marketing cuts out wasteful and ineffective work steps and replaces them with a built-in cycle of economic reinvestment.
- 79. Unpacking concepts 1. What you are selling 2. What businesses value 3. How engagement delivers results
- 80. What you are selling to businesses • It isn’t photos of the people who funded your EDO activities. • Old: selling your organization. (That’s why antiquated EDOs focus on new logos). • Short term value: what you can do for them. But mostly they don’t care about your EDO. • Long term value: it only comes from what your community is. That’s what they’re buying.
- 81. What businesses value • Short term: your help selecting the community and helping them open. • Long term: they want to make sure your community is a long-term value for their business success. • What is the information that shows there is long-term value? • This includes location-customizable and quantified information about: demographics, labor force, adjacent businesses, industry profiles, geographic advantages, available real estate, markets, and more. • The most effective EDOs provide this through online GIS services that enable businesses to dynamically customize their search and research for their unique company situation.
- 82. Engagement Delivers Desired Results • If you are engaged then someone has your attention. If they have your attention they can go deeper in their relationship with you and ability to persuade you. • Important: No one wants to be sold, but people love to buy. Economic developers love to sell and market their community and are pretty aggressive about how they do it. However the more effective way to get people to buy is to empower them to come to the conclusion they want and need to buy your community. EDpros need to give businesses a way to convince themselves.
- 85. The deadly Step 3 mistake • EDOs think that they are done at Step 3. They say, “We landed them and it was a great ribbon cutting. We hit our recruitment numbers for this year. We’re a success!” But those that stop here don’t have their thinking synched with the brains of their customers. • Opening a business isn’t hard. Keeping it open is. More businesses know this statistic than they know EDOs exist: “4 out of 5 new businesses fail” (Source). The effective EDO moves to Step 4.
- 86. Step 4: Business Applications
- 87. Step 4: Business Applications • This is where the EDO and community make the business of running and growing a business easier. • Successful communities have programs/applications that enable businesses to work faster and smarter so they can focus on their core business missions. • Businesses don’t want to be great city planners, marketers, researchers, or employee recruiters. • They just want to spend their time selling more software, making more pizzas, or building more machines.
- 88. Example Business Applications • Online permitting – enable them to submit and track the progress of permits so that they know when they can open or expand. • Online business licenses – make this process as simple as possible and let them do it online so they can save the time of going down to city hall. • Economic gardening – become a consultant to directly help the company grow • Business training – this is often provided by SBDCs but this is going to change to also include online/on-demand training. • Business intelligence – help businesses make smarter decisions through data that would never have access to on their own.
- 90. Treat people the same everywhere • remember that your website needs to treat people the same way your people would. It must care for them. • It has to also develop a relationship with them through exceptional value and service.
- 91. Step 5: Local to Global
- 92. Step 5: Going Global – Local Biz • The website represents the opportunity to reach global markets if it provides the right value to customers and a way for the local company to serve global markets. This includes the combination of product, commerce, delivery, and customer care. • Businesses have traditionally started off with a local audience of customers. Perhaps they are serving the customers of their neighborhood or city. Or if they are a B2B business maybe they are selling to companies in their region or state. • If the company is going to have a big economic impact on your community they have to sell outside of its borders. In economic terms, this is the difference that makes the company one that creates primary jobs and brings money into the community instead of recycling it within the community or exporting money out of the community. • These companies that export goods or services outside of your community are the ones that create the greatest economic impact and which will define your economic development future. • How are you helping your local businesses go global?
- 93. Things you can do to help your local businesses grow and go global 1. See Step 4: Provide business apps and services to help them grow. 2. Online name, presence, and marketing: Today’s global business must have a web presence. And they increase their reach by having a broad Internet discovery marketing strategy through social media, etc., just as you must do as an EDO (Described in Step 3). Yet the majority of business don’t have a website at all. So one of the important things you can do to help your businesses start the process for global sales by educating and facilitating a way to get them online with their own domain, website, and marketing strategy. 3. Online infrastructure: They also need to have a way to get their services to their customers outside of your community. Online this means they need eCommerce tools that accept payment in different currencies, software to track these online purchases, and a logistics method to deliver the products.
- 94. Going global is easier than ever • Even 10 years ago many of the requirements to have an business that used the Internet to grow globally would have been exceedingly challenging for many businesses. Today there are multiple online payment platforms, some of which are so simple to complete a transaction they can be completed on a smart phone. And today global logistics can be as simple as dropping off your product in a package to DHL, FedEx, UPS, or the US post office. • In the past getting your product or service into a foreign market required significant assistance from US Export Assistance Centers or Offices of International Trade. Today all you may need is an eBay or etsy account. • Of course in some ways I’m oversimplifying global expansion, but in other ways I’m not the one oversimplifying it – it’s the Internet platforms that have simplified it so that your local businesses can compete and win in a global economy.
- 95. Taking your EDO global • You must have a compelling online presence that adds value • Multi-language • National and global online ecosystems (states are becoming increasingly less important for leads) – Corporate media platforms (BusinessWeek, Financial Times) – SelectUSA.gov – ZoomProspector.com – Linkedin.com
- 96. Anatalio Ubalde CEO & Co-Founder ubalde@gisplanning.com Linkedin.com/in/anatalioubalde @ZoomProspector Facebook.com/ZoomProspector YouTube.com/GISplanning GISplanning.com ZoomProspector.com LBI.SizeUp.com
Editor's Notes
- #41: So we want to see when businesses are making contact. Blue represents direct contact with EDO staff (phone email, etc). Green is when they’re visiting the website, and you can see that they’re more likely to visit the website than make personal contact. So this shows that if communities are not providing their information online, they may be getting eliminated from consideration without knowing that they were even considered.
- #73: AU: Only 1% of economic development marketing budgets is allocated toward online advertising, and only 13% of respondents identified it as an effective strategy. This is dramatically different from the trends occurring in the larger US market of companies. The share of spending on online advertising approached 10% of marketing budgets in 2008. In the graph showing revenues over time, online advertising revenues can be seen to grow 400% from 2002 to 2007.