The International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Marketing & Attraction Training Course, held on July 23-24, 2024, gathered 60+ economic development professionals to help enhance their marketing knowledge and strategies. Hanna, PPR Strategies’s Director of Client Relations, and Kayla, our Social Media Coordinator, were able to attend this course and are sharing their valuable insights in today’s blog.
Take it away, Kayla and Hanna!
On the first day of the Marketing & Attraction Training Course, we dove into several key topics, beginning with an overview from Colleen Schwab, Global Digital Innovation Lead, Cloud Innovation Program (Public Sector) at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Here, Schwab shared some great insights for economic development marketing, noting, “It is not easy to attract businesses to your market, but it is doable. We have to think about marketing and attraction in new and creative ways.”
We also heard from Chris Knight and Trevor Johnson, who explored essential ideas, like understanding market needs, location decision factors, and using data for investment attraction. Clare Barnett and Johnson also shed some light on the significance of site selectors, modern site selection criteria, and the role of public sentiment and affordable housing in quality-of-life (QOL) considerations.
Day One Key Takeaways:
- Align your EDO’s brand identity with your community’s goals—not the other way around.
- Move forward when you have approximately 70% of the information/certainty needed for a project; don’t wait for 90-100%, or you can miss the opportunity!
- It’s important to understand the “pull” and “push” factors of a community before crafting a marketing plan.
- Affordable and attainable housing is a key QOL factor that impacts talent attraction and retention.
- A “two-pizza team” is all you need to get started! A.k.a., to keep the ball rolling and prevent getting overwhelmed or caught up in project-pausing details, build a small (but agile) team that could be fed lunch with just two pizzas.
The second day focused on designing and rolling out effective marketing strategies. Amanda Ellis from Livability covered marketing techniques—highlighting the use of owned, paid, and earned media and offering tips for successful media relations. Barnett and Johnson followed up with a discussion on the strategic use of incentives, while Knight and Barnett explored international trade and export opportunities to highlight their impact on local economic development.
Day Two Key Takeaways:
- To identify your community’s unique strengths and assets, understand how the area is currently perceived, and then reflect on how you want to be perceived by the outside world. From there, align marketing goals with the competitive advantages of your community.
- Many economic development organizations (EDOs) and economic development districts (EDDs) struggle to secure the funding, staffing, and board support needed to maintain an effective social media marketing plan properly.
- Don’t be afraid to pitch to larger media outlets, but do be realistic about results.
- Auditing your digital footprint can reveal crucial information and insights about how your community is perceived from an outside perspective.
As longtime IEDC supporters, the PPR Strategies team has attended many conferences and events like IEDC’s Marketing & Attraction, but it was our first time experiencing this virtual course ourselves. This two-day course helped us refresh our specialized knowledge of economic development, community development, and tourism-focused strategic communications services. We, along with the rest of the PPR Strategies team, are excited to continue learning and applying this valuable knowledge to our work so we can better serve our clients and their communities!
