Inward investment strategy: should exhibitions be part of the marketing mix, and how?

Trade shows, exhibitions, industry events - for investment promotion agencies they're popular parts of the marketing mix. But should they be? And if so, how should they be used most effectively - to maximise measurable marketing success and ROI?

There's no simple answer

The truth is that there are no obvious, 'must do' exhibitions or events for investment promotion agencies:

Cross-sector trade and investment shows might look like an obvious fit, and no doubt offer networking potential. But are they really likely to be attended by the right people in the specific sectors and companies that align with your distinctive location offer? Probably not. 

Property sector shows are a popular choice, and are sometimes seen as key events for investment promotion. But property investors, developers and agents are just one (albeit very important) intermediary segment. Their forums should be used appropriately, and not mistaken for places you're likely to find the 'end-user' investors (i.e. property occupants) you're ultimately targeting. 

Industry sector exhibitions could, therefore, be the answer - to target those end-user businesses directly. But caution is required here too. You might find yourself selling your location to company sales people who are more interested in selling their widgets to one another. 

The Big Event?

It's not unusual for investment promotion agencies to commit substantial team resources and budget to exhibitions that have successfully positioned themselves as the Big Event for inward investment attraction.

But an effective inward investment marketing strategy must start with a consideration of more fundamental questions, and it shouldn't be decided in advance that exhibitions, let alone any one particular event, must be part of the mix.

These questions include: 

• What are our specific inward investment marketing goals?

• For which types of businesses can we offer a uniquely value-adding location solution? 

• How can we find them most cost-effectively? (Considering all the online and off line channels available to us, and the opportunity cost of not using our time and money in different ways).

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

Achieving marketing ROI with exhibitions

If we decide, in principle, that our strategy should include a particular exhibition, we then need to consider how we should approach it most effectively to achieve our goals, and the best possible marketing ROI.

On which subject, here are a few points to consider: 

An exhibition stand isn't the only option

Exhibitions can be used strategically in a number of ways. It doesn't have to include a stand which, at the final reckoning, could cost tens of thousands of £/€/$ for a high-profile event.

It may be possible to achieve our goals while spending much less: by attending rather than exhibiting; by using the event as a forum for targeted meetings rather than selling from a stand; or by taking advantage of other opportunities including guest speaking slots.

If we plan exhibition attendance as part of an integrated marketing strategy, we can, for example, use them for face-to-face meetings with investment leads generated in more cost-effective ways - notably through online networking and marketing.

A bigger stand ≠ better marketing ROI 

However well selected an exhibition might be, inward investment attraction isn't a mass-market business. Your inward investment value proposition should present a distinctive location solution to specific, targeted types of companies. It's about quality not quantity of leads, so you won't need a huge stand to cope with the footfall (this isn't Apple selling iPhones).

When we do see big stands targeting niche investor audiences, it's likely that we're also seeing unstrategic marketing and the less-than-optimal use of limited resources.  (Sometimes there seems to be a sort of stand-size arms race going on between competing locations!)

These big stands sometimes look like hotbeds of networking activity. But how much of this is exhibitors and stakeholder partners talking to known regional contacts (e.g. property agents), just in a different city or even country? That's a very expensive approach to regional networking, and a crowded stand may be less inviting to investing businesses with real enquiries. Who, they might wonder, are they supposed to talk to?

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

Preparation and follow-up are everything 

Here's another reason to make sure a big exhibition stand doesn't consume your team resources and budget. Preparing well for exhibitions is essential, but all the time spent on procuring and shipping stands and brochures, or booking travel and hotel rooms, is process, not real progress towards achieving your marketing goals. 

As well as honing your value proposition for the audience in question, value-adding preparations should include: 

• Specifying event goals and KPIs to work towards

• Promoting your attendance in advance through targeted, online marketing

• Identifying and approaching target contacts to schedule meetings in advance (potentially with the help of the event's online platform)

• Putting lead-recording systems in place as a basis for structured, post-event follow-up

And that follow-up is where an exhibition's value really lies

In the best cases, an effectively implemented exhibition can lead to one-to-one investor meetings, site visits and more.

In the worst cases, teams that spend too much time on non value-adding preparations can, after the event, be so far behind with their day jobs that leads aren't followed up effectively.

Should I stay (in the office) or should I go? 

As we said above, there are no simple answers. But here are a few key takeaways:

Make no assumptions - exhibitions need to demonstrate better ROI than the alternatives, including highly cost-effective online strategies. 

There's more than one way of using exhibitions in inward investment attraction - they should be planned as part of an integrated inward investment marketing strategy, and may deliver the best ROI when you don't actually exhibit.

Focus on value-adding preparation and follow-up - don't let unproductive processes get in the way.

Generate more inward investment leads.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy - Leveraging the Potential for Inward Investment Attraction

The UK government’s industrial strategy green paper sets out a framework for growth and investment attraction that inward investment agencies and professionals are likely to welcome.

A challenging inheritance

Back in June this year, just before the general election, a succinct article on fdiintelligence.com set out some of the challenges awaiting the incoming government. Following years of uncertainty and economic shocks, the UK was underperforming in investment attraction, including job-creating greenfield FDI.1 The broader picture was one of low GDP growth, productivity growth and business confidence.

Summits and strategies

The new government has made it absolutely clear that it intends to turn the situation around. On October 14th, at the International Investment Summit, plans to create a ‘pro-business environment’ were presented to an invited audience of global business leaders. On October 17th, the government published its green paper (for consultation) - Invest 2035: the UK's modern industrial strategy, focused on tackling barriers to investment and leveraging the UK’s areas of strategic advantage.

Creating a ‘firm foundation for investment’

After years of uncertainty and challenging conditions, the approaches set out in Invest 2035 are likely to be welcomed by organisations and professionals working to attract investment. Reassuring themes include ‘stability and long-termism’, creating a ‘firm foundation for investment’, and ‘reducing barriers to investment’ in areas such as planning. Public sector investment will ‘crowd in’ (note - not ‘crowd out’) private investment. And the strengths of the UK’s regions, specialised industry clusters and strategic industrial sites will be leveraged.

High-potential sectors

The strategy focuses on 8 high-potential ‘growth-driving sectors’*. One of them is Digital and Technologies, and it’s left in no doubt that technologies including AI - ‘using the UK’s data more strategically’ - are seen as key to unlocking growth potential across all the other sectors, and the wider economy. The Net Zero transition is another key, cross-cutting theme. In the government’s words: ‘the UK is entering a major investment cycle, where the Net Zero and digital transformations present considerable investment opportunities’.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

The digital thread

The emphasis on digital technology aims to harness a significant UK advantage - a $1 trillion, global top-3 tech ecosystem. But this isn’t only about tech hubs like London and Cambridge. As we’ve found in our recent inward investment marketing projects, regions across the UK combine strengths in established industries (everything from logistics to agriculture) with leading-edge digital expertise - within both their businesses and universities.

Opportunities therefore exist to develop compelling investment value propositions focused on transforming business productivity, resilience and competitiveness through the application of ‘Industry 4.0’ digitalisation technologies to more traditional sectors - e.g. Logistics 4.0, or Agriculture 4.0. Even when sectors aren’t specifically mentioned as ‘high-potential’, this digital thread makes them integral to the government’s growth strategy. 

Investment multipliers, and challenges

In the context of ‘reducing barriers to investment’ (e.g. planning and data mining) and the ‘Net Zero and digital transformations’, it’s easy to see the potential for serious investment multipliers: an ‘AI boom’ requiring massive investment in energy-hungry data centres, which in turn requires massive investments in sustainable energy technologies and infrastructure, which in turn boosts the construction sector… 

But before we get too excited, we should acknowledge that the government’s industrial strategy will face challenges, both in its development and delivery. With regard to planning, the newts are back. With regard to unleashing AI, the creative industries (also a priority sector) beg to differ. The concern, of course, is getting stuck in the mud. But the government seems to be dead set on delivery, and we should hope that consultation and a partnership approach will balance competing interests, resulting in a strategy that delivers the broadest possible benefits.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

Getting ready for 'considerable investment opportunities'

The digital and Net Zero technological transformations certainly should create ‘considerable investment opportunities’. And the broad strategies set out by the government, in spite of the inevitable challenges, look set to create a more stable and investment-friendly business environment. We therefore think there are good reasons for regional investment promotion agencies and professionals to look ahead with optimism. Which leads on to the question: what should they do next?

Here are just a couple of ideas:

1) Developing distinctive, technology-focused investment value propositions

Attracting investment starts with presenting a unique promise of value to investing businesses - explaining why investing in your location can deliver better ROI than investing anywhere else. Combining established sector strengths (e.g. regional industry clusters) with transformational technology solutions (e.g. digitalisation or decarbonisation), in the way referred to above, is one way to achieve this. 

We would, however, emphasise the word ‘unique’. To stand out in the crowd, locations need to identify and communicate their distinctive strengths, rather than necessarily following central government sector identities - for example, it’s hard to differentiate your offer when yours is yet another location talking about ‘Advanced Manufacturing’. 

2) More strategic inward investment marketing

We’ve talked above about the potential for digital technologies to transform the performance of the investing businesses we’re targeting. But the same principle applies to our own investment attraction activities.

In the world of inward investment promotion, considerable, untapped potential exists to transform investment lead generation performance, measurably, through the more strategic use of digital platforms, channels and networks, and the improved integration of online and offline, and marketing and ‘sales’ activities.

In the context of an improving business investment environment, and in the hope that the UK is entering a ‘major investment cycle’, now is a good time for investment promotion agencies to get ready!

Generate more inward investment leads.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

*Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy Industries, Creative Industries, Defence, Digital and Technologies, Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Professional and Business Services.

Sources: [1] DBT data

Inward investment lead generation - leveraging the world's most powerful B2B business database

Generating inward investment leads is a key step towards landing investment projects - and databases of businesses and decision makers are often sold as a basis for producing lead lists. But using business databases to produce lists of 'investment leads' has always been problematic.  

The old problems of databases and bought 'lead lists' in inward investment attraction

1) Profile fit ≠ strategic fit.

In the worst cases, lists are supplied of businesses with particular profiles (e.g. industry sector specialisations), on the basis that they align with the strengths of the client's location (e.g. in the same industry sector).

But a profile fit is a long way from being a strategic fit - and real potential to invest. The companies on the list might, for example, have no current investment projects, and no interest in, or strategic case for, expanding in the location in question.

2) Why invest here?

In slightly better cases, companies on the 'lead list' may be known to have current investment projects, but still wouldn't pass the key test that would make them real inward investment prospects for this particular location.

Why, for example, would Company X from California suddenly have a strategic case for expanding in a specific, previously unknown UK regional location, based on a speculative approach?

3) More targeted and cost-effective alternatives.

The best scenario, of course, is when the market intelligence is sufficiently robust to identify targeted companies, with investment projects, and specific reasons why the location being promoted is genuinely relevant, attractive and viable for them.

But this viability is often based on established links to the location (e.g. supply chain, R&D or industry network relationships) and may even involve potential reinvestment in existing operations.

Investment promotion agencies can, therefore, potentially achieve the best marketing and lead generation ROI by leveraging their own industry sector networks, beginning with robust regional industry cluster relationships, instead of buying expensive lists of 'investment leads' based in far-off locations.

(Clarity's experience of strategically leveraging regional networks to generate leads, leading to high-value investment projects, stands as testament to the effectiveness of this approach).

4) Inaccurate, out-of-date information.

Business databases and 'lead lists' derived from them are also often inaccurate and out of date.

Businesses change their names, merge or simply cease to exist. And their leaders frequently move or change roles. Following up 'lead lists' can, therefore, sometimes feel like chasing ghosts.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

So, databases are problematic. But just imagine if this had happened:

1) Some bright sparks decided to create the world's biggest B2B professional database - with more than a billion profiles1 - and kept it online to be accessible to everyone.

2) And they integrated this database with a business networking and content sharing platform, so everyone on it could communicate and share relevant insights with each other. 

3) And they did all this well enough to encourage senior business decision makers to use it - actively, frequently, and seriously.

4) And, as well as being the biggest, it also became the most accurate and reliable database of its type, because business users had an incentive to keep their profiles up to date - for networking and career development purposes. 

5) And because its algorithm focused on 'connecting its users with only the most relevant professional advice and expertise',2 it could be used effectively to share specific, valuable insights (e.g. your business location's unique benefits) to targeted audience segments (e.g. specific industry sectors, starting with your regional networks), as a means of attracting companies with real, viable investment projects, and real interest in your location, back to you (thereby addressing the lead generation challenges described above, including 'why invest here?').

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

Then imagine if this happened: 

1) In the vast majority of cases, this hugely powerful, segmentable, senior-level, up-to-date database, including real potential inward investors, was mistaken for Facebook.

Because, on the surface, it was a social media platform, and because its algorithm - which prioritises content that 'shares knowledge, advice or insights'2 - wasn't widely understood.

2) And because it was used in the way most people use Facebook, the content shared on it was, often, untargeted, uninsightful, and in a 'PR' style - involving organisations talking about themselves rather than providing location insights (valuable information and data) that would appeal to both their target investor audiences and the algorithm.

So opportunities were missed to project valuable location solutions into targeted business networks, as a means of attracting real investment leads. 

None of which is actually imaginary

A) This uniquely powerful B2B database of business decision makers exists, and could well be how you accessed this article. 

B) And as part of an integrated, 'inbound' inward investment marketing strategy, it can be one of the most effective means at you're disposal of reaching real, potential inward investors, and attracting them back to you. 

C) I am of course talking about LinkedIn. The key to success is learning how to use it expertly, in areas including: gathering market intelligence; segmenting target audiences; proactively building networks; and creating and sharing insightful, targeted content about your location proposition; as well as the practicalities of using the platform's advanced marketing features to their full potential.

Above all, it's about treating LinkedIn with the seriousness it deserves - as the world's most powerful and usable B2B professional database, that includes key decision makers within targeted investing businesses.

Generate more inward investment leads.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

Sources: [1] LinkedIn, 2024; [2] Hootsuite, 2023

Industry Cluster Partnerships Can Supercharge Your Inward Investment Marketing Performance. Here's How.

Established industry clusters often feature prominently in regional inward investment value propositions and marketing campaigns. And for very good reasons. As geographical concentrations of specialised companies and organisations, clusters have proven potential to boost business productivity - a key benefit for investing companies searching for the best possible location.

What's more, harnessing the capabilities of industry cluster partnerships can transform the quality and performance of sector-focused inward investment marketing. Here's how.

1) More distinctive sector value propositions

Effective sector value proposition development requires a combination of skills - to understand the factors driving business investment and location choice; to produce credible location and sector data comparisons; and to craft persuasive proposition messages. But above all, an effective value proposition must demonstrate unique value - to set your location apart from - and above - the competition.

Insights provided by cluster partners including businesses, research organisations and skills providers can be key to identifying the cluster's outstanding, often niche, capabilities. And your unique sector value proposition is likely to include a highly distinctive combination of those benefits for investing businesses.

2) More impactful inward investment marketing content

Strategic online content should be at the heart of every inward investment marketing campaign - to present the location (and sector) solutions investing businesses are searching for at specific stages in their location selection journeys. But results-focused content marketing requires both quality and quantity - to enable the continual attraction (including via SEO) and engagement (including via business social media) of targeted investor audiences. 

Industry cluster partners can both inform effective content development (by providing expert insights and data) and supply 'ready-to-go' content (their own collateral). If these contributions are integrated into your campaign in a strategic way, the result can be measurably impressive marketing perfomance.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

3) Sector advocacy and thought leadership

Your regional industry cluster is likely to include organisations at the forefront of their sector, with recognised leaders who command respect and influence. By combining powerful value proposition messages with advocacy from high-profile industry figures - including thought leaders - you'll be well-positioned to influence senior decision makers in targeted investing businesses.

Sector leaders and influencers can be incorporated into inward investment marketing campaigns using formats including semi-structured interviews and business case studies. The key is to ensure that your marketing strategy and delivery achieves the credibility required to secure their full buy-in, and their visible participation.

4) Access to high-value industry networks

Regional business leaders have always provided potential routes into senior-level industry networks, but in recent years that potential has been supercharged. Those networks are now replicated - and enhanced - online, and influential supporters can multiply your messages into them with minimal demands on their time - just the few seconds it takes to click a mouse or write a short, supportive comment.

Once again, credibility is key. Industry leaders are only likely to endorse your content if it shows a deep understanding of sector business drivers and speaks the industry's language. If you get it right there's a big prize - privileged access to targeted networks of business decision makers and intermediaries.

The challenges of working with industry cluster partnerships

So, harnessing the capabilities of your industry cluster partnership can potentially transform your inward investment marketing performance. But inevitably partnership working also presents challenges. Here, based on our experience, are some of them:

1) Managing complexity

Any project involving multiple organisations has the potential to get complicated and difficult to manage. Skilled project management is therefore essential, combined with leadership from an organisation viewed as impartial. 

Usually, leadership is an obvious role for the regional economic development or investment promotion agency. However, we've also managed cluster partnership marketing projects that have been led effectively by private-sector organisations - e.g. multi-occupancy industrial sites operators (process industry sector) and airports (logistics sector). It's no coincidence that both these types of organisations have partnership working in their DNA.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

2) Prioritising collective regional goals

Working in partnership with other local businesses, towards collective regional goals, can seem counter-intuitive for companies focused on their own commercial objectives. It can therefore be necessary to set out clearly how a thriving and expanding regional cluster, including new inward investors, can be the 'rising tide that lifts all boats'.

In Clarity's experience, the benefits of cluster growth have been most immediately obvious to businesses in highly integrated clusters. If, for example, a process manufacturing site is connected to a liquid bulk terminal by pipeline infrastructure, the site, pipeline, and terminal companies all benefit directly from new site occupants. Businesses in less integrated clusters can need more convincing, with other local companies sometimes, initially, viewed more as competitors (for customers and labour) than partners.

Having said all that, in recent years, in the UK, successful, high-profile cluster development projects have made businesses more aware of the opportunities - with inward investment accompanied by major strategic investments in assets such as research or training centres that deliver value for all the cluster's businesses. The benefits are, therefore, probably more widely understood now than ever before.

3) Maintaining strategic focus

Lots of organisations; lots of participants; lots of objectives; lots of location and cluster benefits; masses of marketing content... 

The risk in all this is a failing that so often afflicts inward investment and place marketing projects: telling everyone, everywhere, everything that's great about a business location (or industry cluster) all the time, without the strategic focus required to communicate the right messages to the right people in the right places - as a basis for achieving defined, measurable success.

The solution (in combination with skilled, effective project management) is to develop, and professionally deliver, a results-focused inward investment marketing strategy - to transform all that risk and complexity into a uniquely persuasive inward investment marketing campaign for your location and industry cluster.

Generate more inward investment leads.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

Strategic Inward Investment Marketing Delivers Measurably Better Results. Here's How.

Everyone involved in inward investment promotion is likely to agree that their organisation's marketing activities should be focused on delivering results. Which means making tangible progress towards our ultimate goal - landing more inward investment projects (and creating regional prosperity and high value jobs in the process).

The key to achieving this is making our inward investment marketing more strategic.

But What is Strategic Inward Investment Marketing?

To start with some definitions:

Marketing, in our field, is all the things we do to promote our location (or site, or industry cluster) to investing businesses.1 And a strategy is a plan for achieving success.2

It's fair to say, then, that strategic inward investment marketing is promoting our location in a planned way to achieve our goals. 

We can go further and say this: when we market our location strategically, everything we do has a clearly defined (and therefore measurable) goal.

Inward Investment Marketing Activity ⇨ Measurable Goal

How We Can Set Goals and Measure Our Inward Investment Marketing Performance

The process of attracting investing businesses involves a series of stages, which we can think of as their journeys towards investing in our region. These stages provide the basis for setting our goals (or targets, or KPIs) and measuring our performance against them. (And digital marketing is, of course, the easiest to measure):

Stage	Goal	Example Metrics
Awareness	Make investing businesses aware of our location or site offer	- Social media impressions - Website visits
Consideration	Encourage them to engage with our content and consider it seriously	- Time spent on web pages - Interactions with web pages
Conversion	Encourage them to tell us who they are or contact us (i.e. 'convert' inward investment leads)	Forms with contact details, to:  - Download location data - Make an enquiry

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

How We Can Develop a Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing Strategy

Awareness is a dubious metric - it's easy to spend money making lots of the wrong people aware of our location or site offer. For more awareness to lead on to more consideration and more lead conversion, we need to be strategic right from the start - targeting the right audiences with the right messages in the right places. Which means:

• Starting with effective location and market research - to understand our location benefits, and how they align with the needs of specific types of investing businesses (i.e. our  inward investment value proposition)

• Establishing how we can find those targeted business decision makers (or help them to find us)

• Establishing how we can appeal to them at specific stages in their location research and selection journeys

For example:

Strategic short videos can be optimised to build initial awareness of our location offer: presenting key benefits briefly and at a headline level, aligned with the priority location factors of our target businesses.

(Images: Clarity animated videos, for South Humber, UK)

Strategic location data packs can be optimised to enable consideration of our location offer: presenting more detailed information and data relating to a wider range of relevant location factors.

(Images: Clarity location/sector data packs, for Invest Lincolnshire, UK) 

Once we know the measurable results we're trying to achieve - ⇧ Awareness - ⇧ Consideration - ⇧ Conversion - we can design and optimise every piece of marketing content accordingly.

But it's not just about content. The principle of setting and pursuing measurable goals should apply to all our marketing investments and activities - online and offline - from the way we build our website to the events and exhibitions we consider attending. 

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation 🔗

How We Can Avoid Unstrategic Inward Investment Marketing

Inward investment marketing is unstrategic when it isn't planned carefully - based on research, evidence and solid rationale - to achieve specific, measurable results. 

Sometimes we see inward investment marketing plans detailing the activities organisations intend to undertake: develop a brand, build a website, produce brochures and videos, attend particular events and exhibitions, and so on. But an action plan isn't a strategy - unless each activity is designed to achieve a specific goal - the why? not just the how? - the likely result will be expensive under-achievement.

Examples of unstrategic marketing are easy to find in the world of inward investment attraction. Here are just a couple:

1) Large stands at property industry events presenting sector-focused, 'end user investor' propositions to the wrong audience. (In our experience, the rationale is often 'because everyone else is going', and because size is mistaken for effectiveness).

How to be more strategic: Identify, and address, the specific needs and drivers of property investors, and consider if and how event attendance is the most effective, and cost-effective, way of engaging them. (Or: identify where and how best to engage 'end user investor' audiences in specific target sectors.)

2) Expensive, over-long videos showcasing everything that's good about a location - for everyone.

How to be more strategic: Consider the investor audience segment a video is for, where it will be used, how it will help them at a specific stage in their location selection journey, and their likely attention span at that stage. This will help us to optimise the video's content and length, and your sharing strategy.

The Measurable Benefits of More Strategic Inward Investment Marketing

To sum up - with more strategic inward investment marketing, you can:

• Communicate valuable location and site solutions to targeted investor audiences.

• Provide relevant content, in suitable formats, at specific stages in their location selection journeys.

• Measure your success at each stage, continually improve your marketing, and deliver tangible results.

Above all, you can maximise the likelihood of landing more inward investment projects, with all the benefits that will follow for your region.

Generate more inward investment leads.

Request Clarity's new guide for inward investment professionals, with 53 pages of expert insights: Advanced Strategies for Results-focused Inward Investment Marketing and Lead Generation

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

Inward Investment Marketing: Online Lead Generation Strategies for Success

It should be uncontroversial to say that effective internet marketing now belongs at the heart of effective inward investment attraction strategies. Recent market research shows that almost all business location searches now involve online research.1 And the great thing about attracting investing businesses online is that investment leads can effectively be 'self-qualifying': they've found you because your location offer aligns with their needs. Compare and contrast this with the practice of chasing businesses because they have the 'right profile' for your location (e.g. industry sector), but otherwise have no strategic fit or even plans to invest!

But the rise of the internet is a challenge as well as an opportunity. While investing companies (or their advisers) are online searching for the best business location, it's also an increasingly crowded environment in which your location offer could easily get lost. 

Since 2012, when we established Clarity to specialise in inward investment marketing, we've worked on numerous, regional inward investment marketing projects, refined our techniques, and monitored the online strategies pursued by investment promotion agencies (IPAs) and site marketers.

So, here are a few key observations concerning what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to online inward investment lead generation:

1. Highly differentiated inward investment value propositions 

Let's start with that crowded online environment. In any highly competitive marketplace, business success requires effective differentiation - to stand out in the crowd. In our field that means distinctive inward investment value propositions that align specific location strengths, or unique combinations of capabilities, with the identified needs of specific types of businesses. It means avoiding generic sector categories and 'us too' lists of location benefits. However, for successful, online inward investment lead generation, this is just the start of it...

2. Highly optimised online content 

To enable online lead generation, those distinctive value proposition messages must be crafted into highly optimised content that can attract businesses online - by aligning with their search queries - but also engage their interest and establish your inward investment agency's credibility and expertise. Yes, that means the keywords, key phrases and content prioritisation that many of us are familiar with as being central to SEO (search engine optimisation). But it also means accessible content that's entirely focused on our target audience's needs - presenting valuable business location solutions, insights and supporting data. When value proposition messages are diluted by inaccurate, inexpert copywriting, the consequences are likely to be ineffective SEO, reduced IPA credibility, and reduced lead generation potential. 

3. Meticulous attention to segmentation 

We talked about the importance of effective segmentation in a recent Clarity article. In summary (and with specific regard to inward investment marketing) segmentation means grouping particular types of prospective inward investors (e.g. in the same industry sector or business function) as a basis for targeting the right location solutions at them. It's closely associated with distinctive inward investment value propositions and effective content optimisation (SEO). 

But it's also a key area in which investment promotion agency marketing often falls down. The problem is that IPA's typically want to present multiple value propositions (e.g. industry sector offers) on the same website, and often combine them with other types of poorly optimised content (e.g. 'News' releases in which organisations too often 'talk about themselves', not their location solutions for investors). All of this creates 'message pollution' that harms SEO, reduces the value of website content to prospective investors, and ultimately makes it much harder to attract and convert inward investment leads online. 

4. Prioritising inward investment lead generation functionality

It sounds obvious, but generating inward investment leads online means putting lead conversion (i.e. identification) at the heart of your online strategy and the functionality of your website. Compelling value propositions, optimised content, and effective segmentation can attract potential inward investors to your website, but won't tell you who they are, or provide a solid basis for your follow up actions (e.g. contacting them). This requires strategies potentially including optimised 'calls to action' (encouraging them to identify themselves), the effective use of incentives (e.g. information-rich Location Data packs) and data-compliant lead recording functionality (potentially linked to a user-friendly CRM system) to enable structured follow-up. 

It's therefore useful for inward investment professionals to ask themselves: 'is our IPA website optimised for lead generation, or is it just an attractive 'online brochure'?' If it's the latter, you'll almost certainly be missing out on opportunities for inward investment lead generation.

5. Managing partner input and expectations 

It's clear that targeted, optimised, well-segmented online content (notably on IPA websites) is key to generating inward investment leads. But why is this focus so difficult for IPAs to achieve?

In our experience, part of the problem is the intrinsic difficulty of managing marketing campaigns involving multiple regional stakeholders and partners. Even when a projects starts out with a focus on the very best, differentiated value propositions (e.g. industry sector offers) and tightly focused messages, pressure from stakeholders can lead to the inclusion of yet another 'key sector' (that isn't really 'key') or another location USP (that isn't really unique). All of this reduces differentiation, dilutes the offer, and makes investor attraction and lead generation harder. 

These can be difficult battles to win, but IPA teams should make the case for doing the right thing from a marketing perspective, rather than trying to please all the partners all the time - an impossible task anyway! 

6. Keep on publishing and sharing your location benefits online

There's a common misconception that a website is 'finished' when the developer hands it over to the client - in our case the investment promotion agency or site marketer. But this is to think of the website as something static and unchanging - the 'online brochure' we referred to above. And it's a way of thinking that fails to recognise the website's true potential for inward investment lead generation. 

Instead, we should think of our websites as dynamic publishing platforms that we can use to continually communicate our location solutions to targeted audiences. Continual website publishing (e.g. via News/Blog feeds) boosts SEO and therefore enables investor attraction. It also enables us to 'nurture' investor and intermediary relationships by sharing that content with (e.g.) targeted LinkedIn connections or email subscribers. And if we attract and engage more of our target audience, it follows that we should be able to convert more inward investment leads too!

Lead generation - the key objective of inward investment marketing

Generating inward investment leads online isn't easy. As well as requiring optimised messages, platforms and communication strategies, it's likely to require the effective management of broad-ranging regional partnerships with diverse interests and objectives. But it's worth the effort, because investing businesses are online, researching locations, and ready to be attracted by IPAs and site marketers with the right location offers for them. And, quite simply, it can mean the difference between achieving what should be the key objective of inward investment marketing - attracting inward investors - or achieving very little at all. 

Contact Clarity to talk about more effective online inward investment lead generation strategies.

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

Sources:

[1] GIS Planning, FT Group

Inward Investment Value Propositions. What Are They? What Aren't They? And What Makes a Good One?

Almost everyone working in the field of inward investment promotion will be familiar with inward investment value propositions. But what are they? And what aren't they? And what makes a good one?

'Value proposition' is a marketing concept that can apply to any kind of 'product' (including a business location). By one definition it's a concise statement presenting an organisation's unique promise of value to its customers. How does this 'product' deliver benefits that others don't?

But for some reason, in the field of inward investment promotion, we repeatedly see marketing messages (e.g. in websites or brochures) that are clearly intended to promise value for investors, but somehow miss the mark.

A recurring example is a certain kind of headline economic statistic. For example:

'Our region has GVA of X billion (£$€)', or 'a workforce of X million'.

(I've just randomly checked two major UK city inward investment websites. Both lead with statistics of this sort).

Messages like these present economic data but not value for investing businesses. Because they fail to answer essential, investor-focused questions:

So what? What's in it for our business?

(Often, they lack the essential context required to make them meaningful at all. Is X billion (£$€) GVA impressive anyway? How does it compare with competitor regions?)

We can understand the problem here by thinking of the prospective inward investor like any other kind of customer - a shopper, say. Which is exactly what they are - shopping around to find the ideal location and site. When I visit Marks and Spencer, I'm really not bothered about the company's turnover. I'm searching for a stylish cardigan that's just right for me!

And when a retailer wants to sell more cardigans they don't tell their customers about their impressive knitwear sales volumes. They identify their target audience segment (let's say 'well-seasoned gentlemen'), identify their needs, and communicate distinctive product benefits that align with them: e.g. 'comfort and style at a great price!'. That's their value proposition.

So why do inward investment marketing messages that try to promise value so often fail?

Here's an attempt at an explanation:

It's generally (and correctly) understood that businesses are likely to make investment decisions (including location and site selection) based on reliable data. So it follows that we should provide them with data about our location. And where do we source those data from? Often the same researchers/analysts who provide us with regional economic data for purposes including local government planning - providing a picture of what our economy looks like.

The problem is that investing business are unlikely to select your location and industry sector because the regional data looks good. They want to know the specific benefits for a business like theirs.

Understanding your region's economic profile is an essential baseline. But this shouldn't be the starting point for inward investment value proposition development. Instead, the starting point should be understanding the customer's (i.e. the prospective investor's) needs and drivers: the current trends influencing investment in their industry sector; the specific combination of factors (and their prioritisation) likely to determine their location choice. Only then can the right location data be identifed and presented to respond to those needs. 

The clue's in the statement at the top of this post: 'value proposition' is a marketing concept. So why would value proposition development be left to data analysts? 

To be absolutely clear: the data analyst's input is essential - they're a vital and highly skilled part of the team. But, in the case of inward investment value proposition development, their skills must be combined with other types of expertise: the industry sector knowledge (commercial, technological, etc.) required to understand business investment drivers, and the marketing (and 'sales') knowledge required to formulate value proposition messages that really hit the mark.

And the problem highlighted here isn't only about over-reliance on data analysts. It's just as bad when the job's left to non-specialist marketers and copywriters. In these cases, everything's 'excellent' and 'world-class', with none of the supporting evidence that a well-directed data analyst can provide!

The takeaway is that inward investment value proposition development requires a specialised combination of expertise: research and analysis; marketing and sales; business, commercial, industry sector, location and site knowledge. Credibility, and therefore effective investor attraction and engagement, depend on it. But fundamentally it's a marketing exercise, and it starts with understanding our 'customers' - targeted investing businesses.

Contact Clarity to talk about developing compelling inward investment value propositions for your location and industry sectors.

Author:

Nick Smillie

Managing Director & Senior Consultant

Inward Investment Marketing Insights and Key Trends at the End of 2023

Here’s Clarity’s inward investment marketing wrap up for the end of 2023, in which we take a look at:

• A ‘hybrid working’ future: the opportunities for inward investment and place marketers
• AI, technology, and getting the inward investment marketing basics right
• Attracting inward investment in a tough economic climate
• Clarity’s Inward Investment Marketing Word of the Year, 2023

A ‘hybrid working’ future: opportunities for inward investment and place marketers

Online Inward Investment Attraction Has Come of Age. So How Can Business Location Marketers Seize the Opportunity?

For several years, internet marketing has been part of the inward investment promotion toolkit. But now, through developments in internet technologies, platforms, and marketing techniques, as well as the ways we do business, online inward investment lead generation has truly come of age. Here's why, and how Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) and site marketing teams can seize the opportunity to attract more investing businesses online.

Place Marketing Isn’t Magic. The Basic Principles of Effective Marketing Still Apply.

Place is the word…

In the world of economic development, there’s no doubt that ‘Place’ has been the word of the last few years. It's now quite common for local authorities to have Place directorates, and an entire vocabulary of related words has evolved, like 'placemaking' and even 'placeness'.

Inward Investment Attraction in Times of Great Uncertainty - Thoughts on What City, Town & Regional Agencies Need To Do...

During this period of great economic uncertainty, it's not surprising that those of us working in economic development and inward investment promotion sometimes feel like rabbits caught in the headlights - shocked and unsure of which way to turn.

Time-Lapsed? Why Industrial & Logistics Sites Need Better Internet Marketing Strategies for the New Online Business Era

One major consequence of coronavirus has been the urgent reassessment of well-established business practices. Most obviously, many more activities have moved online, including customer interactions. This has brought about revolutionary change in the ways businesses use technology, with many gaining an edge on their competitors by adapting at impressive speed. On the other hand, companies that don't move with the times are likely to lose out.

Place Marketing in the New Era of 'Hybrid Working' - Identifying Opportunities for Provincial Towns, Cities and Regions After Coronavirus

For a long time now, the big cities have looked like the winners in the economic development stakes - especially those with strengths in service and technology sectors. And an important reason for this has been agglomeration, or industry clustering.

Developing Outstanding Inward Investment Value Propositions: 5 Key Principles for Success...

Perhaps the most basic challenge facing Investment Promotion Agencies is this: how to make their business location stand out from all the other locations that investing businesses could choose instead.

That's why effective location differentiation is essential, and why Value Proposition research and development should be the starting point for every Investment Promotion Agency's marketing and sales activities (and all their other activities for that matter!).