Strategic economic development projects - to grow entire regions or key locations within them - have multiple stakeholders who want to be kept informed. But information that's relevant to them may be of no interest to investing businesses, and could even put them off.
So how can economic development agencies (EDAs) communicate with their various audiences more effectively, to give them the information they want, but not the information they don't?
Communicating with stakeholders
Large-scale economic development projects have a wide range of stakeholders, potentially including local and national government, politicians, regional businesses, industry groups, skills providers, research organisations, voters, and affected local communities.
Each of these groups wants to see evidence of progress, returns on their financial or in-kind investments, and positive results for the region - that is, project accountability. So the EDAs responsible for project delivery need to keep them informed through their communications.
Marketing to investing businesses
But EDAs also need to market their projects effectively to attract investing businesses - a different audience segment with very different interests in economic development projects.
Investing businesses want to know how the location or site in question satisfies their own various requirements - across a range of factors potentially including infrastructure, property, skills and connectivity - and does so more effectively than the competition. In other words, they want to know what's in it for them.
Mixing up the messages
When EDAs talk to these two, basic audience segments via the same communication channels - a LinkedIn company page, for example - it's inevitable that lots of content that may be of interest to stakeholders probably won't be of interest to investing businesses.
Worse, it could be of so little relevance and value to them that they stop taking notice, or stop following the EDA's communications altogether. And that's a problem, because attracting investing businesses is likely to be absolutely fundamental to project success.
Thinking like an inward investor
A useful experiment is to consider EDA communications as if you were a potential inward investor (i.e. an investing business with no existing stake in the project) searching for the ideal location.
If the EDA or partnership seems to talk about itself, or to itself, too much of the time - updates on senior appointments or organisational changes being common examples - rather than how the project delivers value for inward investors, it's likely that investing businesses will decide the content isn't for them, and switch off.
Communicating more like commercial businesses
EDAs can address this problem by thinking more like commercial businesses themselves. Supermarkets, for example, want to attract more customers, so they focus their consumer marketing (TV adverts, say) on why they offer better products and value than their competitors.
What they don't do is intersperse adverts promoting their cheaper, tastier chocolates with others announcing their new board chairman or business growth strategy. These messages are of interest to different audiences and should be communicated via different, targeted channels - shareholder newsletters, for example.
Strategic communications - beyond inward investment marketing
What we're talking about here is strategic communications. This includes marketing to prospective customers - investing businesses in the case of EDAs - but also keeping stakeholders informed.
Our communications are strategic when our messages and content are tailored to the needs and drivers of specific audience segments; delivered to them via appropriate, targeted channels; and designed to achieve specific, ideally measurable, goals.
The benefits of strategic, segmented communications in economic development
Strategic, segmented communications are better for everyone involved in major economic development projects. Target audiences get to see content that's relevant and valuable to them, but are spared content that isn't. In the case of investing businesses, that's likely to keep them engaged, as a basis for direct contact to discuss their investment projects.
Focused content boosts SEO, too, including in the new age of AI-powered search engines. Investing businesses are online, searching for locations that match their specific requirements. And they're far more likely to find content that aligns with their needs and searches when it's 'unpolluted' by messages that are irrelevant to them.
Conclusions in summary
- Economic development agencies delivering major projects need to communicate effectively with both stakeholders and investing businesses.
- But these two audiences have very different interests and needs, and too much stakeholder-focused content can put investing businesses off.
- Strategic communications involves giving each audience segment only the information it's likely to want, via appropriate, targeted channels, to achieve clearly defined objectives.
- Carefully segmented, strategic communications are better for everyone - to inform stakeholders, engage investing businesses, and help EDAs achieve ambitious project goals.
