Admittedly, capturing a leprechaun may feel easier than capturing the interest of a site selector. But tweaking your approach may help you find the pot of proverbial gold that helps your community prosper. These communication tactics may help you “get lucky” in site selection scenarios:
Keep Collateral Concise
To successfully court a site selector, ensure that your marketing pieces are concise and visually appealing. Leave the decorative language for Yeats and Joyce; succinct language and data-driven facts are the ways to a site selector’s heart. Presentation matters, so ensure that your digital and print collateral balances word and image, features quality photos and updated metrics. Trust us: a dissertation about your community’s advantages will end up in the recycling bin. A thoughtful piece that marries copy and design is the way forward.
Avoid Communications Fatigue
Site selectors have fast-paced, high-stakes careers, so inundating phones, inboxes, and mailboxes with marketing materials will make you an annoyance. Check in with site selectors on a quarterly basis, whether it’s via email, e-newsletter, sending them a newsworthy article, clip, or communication about your community (with a handwritten note). Tracking your touchpoints in a project management system or Google Calendar will help you gauge frequency of contact and move site selectors to a higher level of engagement. Keeping track of when you sent that last email, marketing piece, or text will keep your interactions value-added.
Let Data Drive The Narrative
If your site selection collateral uses data that’s woefully out-of-date, or details properties that are no longer available, there should be tears in your beer. You need to tell the story that a site selection consultant wants to know. This may not align exactly with what you want to tell, but transparency builds trust. Ensure that your collaterals home in on:
- Labor market metrics
- Workforce data
- Education and training programs
- Transportation and logistics
- Details on available land, commercial sites and buildings
- Key companies and employers
- Leading industries and sectors
- Incentives
- Utilities and infrastructure
- Quality of life
Spotlight Late-Breaking Incentives and Developments
Are your industry clusters crushing the marketplace? Has your community topped the rankings in a “best of” list? Is your local university teaming up on tech incubation? Are you offering new economic incentives? Whether the news is an infrastructure investment, an HQ relocation, or a workforce development program, these wins help you stand out from the crowd. Share them front and center: in a subject line, a lead article in an e-newsletter, or prominently in print collateral.
As a consulting firm with an economic development lens, our goal is to empower you with information. If you need an expert eye on your outreach strategy, contact us today. Until then, may the road rise up to meet you on this journey to site selection success!
