For many years of my
career, I was in the media business. Having run a newspaper and then a radio
network, I was always struck by the number of advertisers who would run ads in
media that THEY liked, rather than where the audience was. With no
understanding of how to select and measure media, they often selected media
based on their own preferences. Like
NPR? That's fine, but if you want to reach a mass market of 18-25-year-old soft
drink consumers, that’s not the place to do it.
Similarly, the way ads are
developed is directly related to the audience. Writing, photo selection, and
copy are carefully crafted to resonate with the audience. Ads selling to
12-year-olds are dramatically different than those selling to retirees.
When developing marketing
messages for communities, we also have to carefully consider the needs of the
audiences. As much as we'd each like to think that our marketing efforts are
all about how wonderful our place is, that's really not the case. The truth is
that everything we do and say should be based on the needs and expectations of
target audiences.
Inside-Out Marketing
A very common approach to
place marketing is to gather the team together and ask this question, “What do
we want to say?” At that point, the discussion may include topics such as
workforce, available buildings, education, and quality of life. These are all
great points. For a web site, the group may also want to point out that their
county is ranked number three in the state for soybean production, or that the
area was once a staging site for a famous civil war infantry. It may even be
the birthplace of a famous poet. A few of these items are interesting but the
real question that must be asked is “Will any of these be important to a site
selector considering bringing a jobs project to the area?” The people on the
inside (inside the community) may find these things important, but they may not
be important to an economic development project.
Outside-In Marketing
From the outside, meaning
outside the area or even outside the country, other factors may be more
important. To a site selector in New York or a C-Suite Executive in Shanghai,
the focus will likely be elsewhere.
Sure, sites and buildings,
workforce, and education data will be important, but they need and expect very
deep information about topics that will help them move their project forward
and keep your community on the list. In response to that need for detailed
data, Brand
Acceleration developed the Economic Dashboard, a web site add-on tool that provides broad-based economic and
workforce data, making it easy for a web visitor to find up-to-date
information.
Through numerous surveys,
interviews, and face-to-face conversations with key audiences, we’ve learned a
lot about what these people want and don’t want to see. I’m talking about
detailed information about everything from the photos they like to see to the
words used in copy. Our findings are so deep that we not only know which web
pages are most important, but we can accurately predict their page-to-page path
once they visit a web site. Knowing this helps us develop a web site that meets
visitor expectations.
What about Quality of Life?
I received a call one day
from an EDO director who had just attended a meeting where a panelist suggested
that he doesn’t care about an area’s quality of life. “Do we even need a
Quality of Life page,” he asked? So, we launched an effort to dig into this
topic. Out of a list of sixteen potential web site pages, Quality of Life was
ranked number fifteen. However! This is big. When we dug deeper, we found that
once a community makes it to short-list status, the QOL page becomes very
important to the management team and trailing family considering relocating to
your area. So, we dug even deeper to learn how the trailing spouse uses an EDO
web site. Once a short-list is established, the trailing spouse will visit your
web site and immediately begin forming opinions about your community. Photos of
the shopping district without cars and shoppers, playgrounds and parks without
playing children, or a high school football field showing no football game do
more harm than good. If important information is missing, or if the photos are
just plain ugly, he or she may kill the deal by saying, “I’m not going to live
in that ugly place!” Boom, you’re off the list. Other community web sites, such
as the Chamber of Commerce, Schools, and Visitor’s Bureau, can also make or
break a deal.
What’s the point?
The point of all this is
to say that everything you show, say, and do should be seen through the eyes of
the audience. What do they want to see? What information do they need? Which
wording helps? Which photos are best? During a site visit, who should attend?
What role should each person play? What do visitors want to see and do?
As you move into the
planning of your marketing and communications, always do so as if you were the
audience, looking in. Say what they want you to say and show what they want to
see.
Apple founder Steve Jobs
once said "You‘ve
got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology -
not the other way around." I think he had it right.
Want to
share a story? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share your thoughts and
personal experiences below.
Have a
great week and I’ll see you soon,
Jim Walton
CEO
Brand Acceleration, Inc.
Branding // Marketing Communications // Public
Relations
Indianapolis: 317.536.6255
Charlotte: 704:230:0394
Atlanta: 404.474.7980
Fax: 317.222.1425
Cell: 317.523.7380
Brand
Acceleration is a full-service marketing communications, brand management and
public relations firm with a focus on economic development, architecture,
engineering and construction.
