Sandy [00:00:07]:

Every organization, every community needs to have ongoing content that is adding value to their website, enhancing the visitor to their website experience, supporting search engines, and helping people to find you. So making sure that you have a strategy and approach for that ongoing content is critically important too.

 

Amanda [00:00:32]:

That’s the voice of Sandy Dubay, President and CEO of PPR Strategies, joining us today to talk about one of our favorite topics at Livability, marketing your community and how so much of economic development is really… you guessed it… marketing. We’ll touch on what platforms to focus on, creating collaboration, even if you don’t have marketing-focused colleagues, and how to tell the story of your own organization alongside the story of your city or region. I’m Amanda Ellis and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for Chamber, Economic Development, and Talent Attraction professionals. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com and with that, let’s jump in. Sandy, thank you so much for hopping on today. Super excited to talk with you for Inside America’s Best Cities for a fun marketing conversation. We love those.

 

Sandy [00:01:26]:

I love it too. Thanks for the invitation. I appreciate it.

 

Amanda [00:01:30]:

So I wanted to start by talking about, you could really make an argument that in a way, economic development is all marketing and all economic developers are marketers, have their marketing hat on all the time. Can you talk more about that idea just to frame up some of the other things we’re going to be chatting about?

 

Sandy [00:01:46]:

Sure. That’s something that I say all the time is that if you are in economic development, you are a marketer. I don’t care if your title is finance director, if your title is real estate consultant. You know, you’re running a revolving loan fund. It does not matter. You are a marketer whether you are, you know, selling, and I use air quotes when I say that, but sometimes you are obviously, you know, selling and promoting your existing community. You are trying to provide the best customer service that you can to your existing customers, your existing businesses in that community. But thinking about what that team looks like can be an interesting conversation that I think we’ll dive into a little bit greater. But I think everyone in that with a job title of economic developer or within that community is truly a marketer and can have a role on communicating and promoting, telling the story of their organization or their community.

 

Amanda [00:02:52]:

Yeah, it’s so important. And even when you think about it from a talent attraction standpoint, which of course that livability is the part we’re thinking about a lot, that’s really… Yeah, it’s really marketing.

 

Sandy [00:03:01]:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, yes, community colleges. I mean, literally, we could go down the rabbit hole of organizations and how they apply and have that economic development marketer lens cap on.

 

Amanda [00:03:15]:

Yeah. And the ways you reach people, the way you push out the things you’re doing, all that is so key. And it’s all that stuff that we’re talking about. Also to frame us up here, tell us a bit before we go further about your agency, PPR strategies: people, places, reimagined. What do you all do to support organizations in our space?

 

Sandy [00:03:34]:

We focus on capacity building. So the projects and programs that somebody within an organization might not have the interest or the skill set, or nine times out of ten, the time to do. Our goal is to make you look like a rock star and take a little bit of pressure off. So that work could be in the strategic planning space, it could be in the brand development website development space, could be programmatic support with an idea. We help develop some pilot programs for economic development or workforce development-type organizations, even content creation. So anything kind of within that space we can help to fill a role. I often say, you know, we’re like cousins. We’re not coming to every family event, we’re not there at every staff meeting, but we’re going to come to the big, you know, your big things and be there to support you behind the scenes.

 

Amanda [00:04:35]:

Well, that’s an ideal lead in to a lot of the other tips we’re going to be giving to save folks time. As we go through our conversation today, top two to three tips for folks in our industries who are responsible for marketing their community, and probably a lot of other things like we were just talking about without maybe a lot of resources for that outside support.

 

Sandy [00:04:56]:

Sure. So a couple of tips that I always suggest is first, think about your customer, think about your business, think about how they are spending their time, how they are consuming information, how they like to be communicated with. It’s not about you, it’s about them. So that can be challenging when we talk about social media and all of these different platforms and we look at, you know, age and gender and cultural differences and nuances. But I want you to be really thinking about your customer and how they like to receive information. So that’s the first, the first little kind of mindset shift that it takes in order to be productive and effective. My next tip is that you don’t… I’ve given you permission, actually, okay, so giving your listeners permission to not be on all of the platforms, you do not need to be on every social platform. Pick, again, think about your customer. Think about your audience. Where are they? Where are they consuming information? If they are not on Snapchat, bam. Permission to avoid Snapchat. And your listeners might be thinking, oh, okay, great, I wasn’t even, Snapchat, wasn’t even on my radar. But if you’re not getting the effectiveness that you wanted out of Instagram or Facebook, then shift your energies elsewhere. I do think that all economic developers need to be on LinkedIn, so I generally don’t make that a negotiation point. You really have to or should be leaning in. But if you’re doing a talent attraction campaign, maybe that campaign isn’t focused on LinkedIn. Maybe that campaign is focused in greater detail on Instagram. So really selecting your platforms, for a particular reason. You don’t need to be on all of them, but be consistent. Create a calendar that’s gonna help and support you. You don’t want to be waking up every day saying, oh my gosh, today I have to do all these things. Don’t put that kind of undue stress on yourself or your team, and lean in and select the platforms that are best for you, best for the audience, where you can lean in and be most consistent and ultimately effective in reaching your target audience.

 

Amanda [00:07:30]:

That’s always a relief to hear because there’s a new social platform very often, and even for people that their whole job is marketing, staying on top of all that is. I mean, that’s why social media managers are their own job. And even then, that’s always a relief to hear and talk about.

 

Sandy [00:07:47]:

Yes, I do have one other tip, which was a third one, which is to ask for help. Don’t do it alone. And that can be engaging your volunteers. It could be engaging local businesses. I know that Livability, you guys work with a lot of tourism and chamber organizations, so figuring out who that entire economic development team is within your community, not just your office, and let’s delve out some of those resources. Let’s collaborate and really partner. So ask for help. Don’t do it alone.

 

Amanda [00:08:22]:

Yeah, that’s something I definitely wanted to talk more about with you. So for these folks who may not have many peers at all, or just no marketing-focused peers within their organizations, how can they create that collaboration for themselves anyway? You talked a little bit about collaborating with others in the community that are working on some of the same things. Talk about that a little bit more and some ideas to create that feeling of more of a team, even if they’re not actually your coworkers.

 

Sandy [00:08:49]:

I think that the first thing honestly would be to think of them more as colleagues. And they might, you might not get your paycheck from the same entity directly, but you are there to support. You all have a very similar goal or mission. So a Chamber, certainly in many communities, is really uniquely positioned to have that direct connection. The business community and in a more of a membership model is great because businesses have really bought in. They know who their chamber team is. They come and participate in their events. They might need them for some advocacy work. So utilizing and figuring out who that team is to support and figuring out where the gaps are between your organization and their organization, they might be really heavy events focused, you might be more strategy, bigger picture, longer-term projects for the community focused. Figure out where that, you know, there can be mutual, you can be mutually beneficial. Tourism, you know, is another partner that certainly want to engage and connect with. Tourism is oftentimes the most significant industry in a community and leaning in on the types of programs or initiatives that they’re doing. We say that somebody is going to be a visitor first before they relocate. So whether it’s locating for themselves personally to look for that next great job opportunity, or they’re looking to relocate their business, they’re going to visit first. So how can you support those visitor activities so that you are telling a complimentary story on that business and talent attraction? Come and visit and then fall in love and stay. You might need to relocate your business or start up a business. What’s the entrepreneur ecosystem look like here? And making sure that your tourism partners understand that and can collaborate with you. I think that main streets, trade associations, you know, I’ve been saying for years that oftentimes because we work, we do work with a lot of rural communities, which I love. My heart is often in a rural community, you know, in that rural nature, all too often you’ve got enough financial resources to compete against your neighbor. So how about you collaborate with your neighboring community? The businesses don’t care. You know, the job seekers don’t care if they’ve got a cross a county line. Generally, they want what’s best for them. So finding out how you can, new ways to collaborate instead of compete.

 

Amanda [00:11:45]:

I love particularly that you highlighted the tourism connection because I feel like that gets overlooked so often. But that firsthand experience piece is something that we see as one of the top ways that people collect information about a place.

 

Sandy [00:11:59]:

Yeah, because we’re all humans like, we all love to visit and there are things that we’re really interested in. So whether it is as a community, we’re trying to attract the talent because they enjoy the outdoor recreation or the urban city life and the walkable community or whatever it happens to be, that needs to balance with that business, entrepreneurial, startup ecosystem, all of what are the assets of the community. So figuring out that balance, we should not be operating in distinct silos. We all should be working together.

 

Amanda [00:12:37]:

As we’re talking about creating that support for yourself. What about if someone does have resources to engage consultants or other experts in the marketing realm? Any suggestions on what to use that for? So if you say that you don’t have an extensive marketing background, what are the harder things to learn about or do well on your own? So where might you want to funnel out that resource, if it’s something that you have?

 

Sandy [00:13:06]:

Depending upon what your brand and website looks like right now, that’s probably where that would be. My first thought. And obviously a brand is more than just a logo. It’s your voice, it’s the imagery, it’s all of these pieces. Your brand for yourself can be whatever you want it to be today. Your brand for your community needs to have another layer of consistency and support across stakeholders. So creating a personal brand very different from creating an organization or a community brand. And so I would recommend that people lean in on getting some professional support if they can.

 

Amanda [00:13:49]:

Yeah. And I think websites in particular, there’s so many resources out there now that you could try to make a website all on your own. But as far as something more sleek and professional looking, I think that’s a lot harder to do if you don’t have all those skills and aren’t more of an expert.

 

Sandy [00:14:08]:

Yeah, and it might not be that you need somebody to do a complete overhaul. It might be that you just need some guidance and support or your website is awesome. You were able to set it all up, but now what? How are you maintaining that content? And you know, Amanda, you know, it’s hard. That content creation, this, doing this is, you know, doing podcasts is a piece of that content strategy. And I think every organization, every community needs to have ongoing content that is adding value to their website, enhancing the visitor to their website experience, supporting search engines and helping people to find you. So making sure that you have a strategy and approach for that ongoing content is critically important too.

 

Amanda [00:14:59]:

Yeah, it all goes back to that, we always talk about the digital footprint, your digital front door. What are people finding out about you online? Because that’s where they’re all going to go first.

 

Sandy [00:15:08]:

Yes, yes, yes. I always say the Google, people will go to the Google.

 

Amanda [00:15:13]:

So the content plays into that because you can’t control everything. Of course that’s going to pop up when people are searching for those key terms. But the more positive stuff you’re pushing out, the better.

 

Sandy [00:15:24]:

Yes, yes. There are so many people out there, particularly with social, that are telling your story. And so you want to make sure that you are telling your story in the way that supports your community, your organization, and puts it in its best light.

 

Amanda [00:15:40]:

We talked about social media platforms, how to decide which ones you should be on, how to not get overwhelmed. What about other storytelling platforms or elements of that digital footprint we were just talking about to think about that, are, aren’t social media. So maybe delving into, like we talked about content strategy, where does that live? You know, blogs on your website, podcasts, video… talk through that and how you would advise someone you were working with on those things.

 

Sandy [00:16:09]:

That is critically important. And I’m gonna highlight with that, kind of, with that digital footprint, a combination of your website and social is that brand voice, you know, your tone, your style, word choice. We create that with clients, and they’re always shocked when we give them a list of words to use and not to use. They’re like, oh, wow, we kind of had that informally. But to have this written down can be pretty handy, especially when there’s turnover or as we talked about earlier, not doing it all yourself. So making sure that your digital footprint is consistent. When you have multiple hands on the keyboard, you want to bring on an intern. You have three staff members that are all contributing to your website or to your social voice. Are they all consistent? Or do people shake their head and wonder if you just got hacked because you’re super casual today and yesterday you were very formal. So thinking about that from a digital footprint perspective as well. And then I think that the, and we’ve kind of touched on the concept of it without saying it, but this idea of owned, earned, and paid media, and the place for all of it owned media, obviously, your website, your blogs, the content that you are putting out there, this podcast would be owned media for Livability. Earned media would be if a community, Amanda, if you were interviewing somebody and telling a story about them, that’s kind of a third party piece, and then obviously paid in that digital ad space. And I think that there is a place for all of it, truly regardless of the size of your community, and making sure that you are being purposeful and strategic across that digital experience.

 

Amanda [00:18:06]:

Agreed. We always talk about also that owned, earned, paid thing, and I like to frame it as the level of… control is kind of a negative word, but the control or influence you have over those categories and framing it that way, because of course, like your own media, your website, your own content platforms, you own that. But when people are looking for info, that’s not all they want to see. Like, of course the Chamber is going to say everything’s awesome. And we love that. But, you know, they also want the real scoop, so to speak. And some of those earned branded pieces can communicate that in a different way that helps shape the narrative well.

 

Sandy [00:18:43]:

And my gosh, I mean, we could talk about so many different things, but having a relationship with your local media, you know, print isn’t what it used to be. Print is also digital. It’s video, it’s everything across so many different mediums. And having a relationship with your local editorial board or the editor of, you know, of your talk radio show or something, or probably doing podcasts also and live streaming. And again, getting back to where we were at the beginning, think about where your audience is. How are they consuming information, where are they listening? And that, and your audiences, you’ve got several different buckets of audience. Your local audience is critically important. And oftentimes, I just want to make sure that your listeners here today, our listeners today, don’t forget the importance of that local, existing business audience.

 

Amanda [00:19:36]:

Yes. Well, that is a great lead in to something I definitely wanted us to talk about. So that piece of telling your own story versus telling the community story, but instead, like, what’s your organization doing? How are you benefiting the community? Feel like that gets lost a lot of the time just because, again, short on time, so much going on gets lost in the shuffle. But what are some ways to, maybe some easy ways to start doing a better job at that? Because it’s also important.

 

Sandy [00:20:02]:

Yes, and I end up aggravating other economic developers when I say this, but they’re terrible at telling their own story. Generally, they want to tell the story of their community, and they are amazing at that. But when it comes to bragging their successes, it feels uncomfortable. But your stakeholders, your elected officials, those that are in charge of your budget, are not mind readers. So unless you tell them what you’ve been doing on a regular basis, they won’t know and they will assume you’re not doing anything. So figuring out what that looks like, whether it’s a quarterly update, an op-ed piece in the newspaper, a quarterly report, or an annual report, annual reports sounds so intimidating and daunting. Let’s do an impact statement. Let’s just do a one-pager of the impact that you’ve had and how many businesses you’ve located, or how your taxes have increased, or how many people have started new businesses or jobs have been created or permits have been pulled in the last twelve months, anything like that. Even presenting and making presentations to some of your partner organizations, like your chambers, your rotaries, getting out there regularly, you might think that everybody hears and knows what you’re doing, or that you’re talking to them too much, or you’re talking about yourself too much. Well, brag about your team. Brag the people that the businesses that have had a recent win, a big success lately. Let that be the story. But you need to tell a story.

 

Amanda [00:21:43]:

Yeah, it seems that EDOs and organizations that are combined, it seems like, have a little bit easier time telling some of those local stories, because I think Chambers tend to be more positioned to do that anyway because of the types of interactions they’re having, whereas EDOs, a lot of times, locally is not the primary audience that their day to day work is working to reach. Right. And so if they’re their own arm, I think it’s probably especially challenging for them. What do you think?

 

Sandy [00:22:11]:

You’re right. It’s so funny because I think of chambers and I think that critical piece of advocacy work that they do for businesses that a government employee can’t do. So with that embedded in their core service of advocating, I think there oftentimes a chamber is advocating for themselves as a collective, a little bit differently than a government-oriented office, you know, a fully public sector entity.

 

Amanda [00:22:42]:

Yes, well, as we head toward wrapping up here, I always wrap up with a fun question, but before we go to the fun question, I wanted to open it up to you. I know you have so much knowledge on this topic, have worked with so many different groups in this space. Anything else you’d want to add or throw out that we didn’t talk about already?

 

Sandy [00:22:58]:

It’s funny, because I was thinking I had, you talking about talent attraction and that being such a focus for Livability. Don’t forget your community colleges and your universities. If you are fortunate enough to have a community college or an institution in your community, use that as a partner, that’s an ideal talent attraction. They’ve been drinking the Kool-aid of your community for the last two to four years, if not a lifetime, and help them to see all of the potential if they were to stay. And I know that’s so much easier said than done. And communities that have higher education as a partner is kind of an ongoing struggle, but opportunity. But I would encourage people to lean in on that piece. I know I stayed in my community after graduation, after I graduated from college, I lived there for 20 more years because I fell in love with it.

 

Amanda [00:23:56]:

That’s something I’ve been seeing a lot more intentionality around for communities, which I think is awesome. The retaining graduates piece and looking at creating even programs around helping those early, recent grads, very early career folks get connected to each other, build those early networks in a certain place because those are so key. Right. And just understand the benefits of growing their lives and careers and wherever they are versus leaving and just putting a lot more intentionality around that. So, yes. All right, so moving to our fun piece. So remind our listeners, where are you based?

 

Sandy [00:24:30]:

I am in Frederick, Maryland. They might be familiar with Frederick because Frederick has made your top 100 list for the last several years. I think as high as top four.

 

Amanda [00:24:40]:

They have. So we always ask, what is a bucket list item if someone were to visit for the first time, that they should make sure to do?

 

Sandy [00:24:52]:

So, because I listen and I’m a fan of yours, Amanda. I was able to think about this. My list is pretty long, but I live downtown. I live and work downtown and I love showing people Carroll Creek, which is our linear park here in downtown Frederick. And it’s just gorgeous. It has been a huge economic development project for the last 40-plus years, maybe even 50 years. There was a flood in downtown Frederick, I think close to 50 years now, but you would not know it to walk around town now. There are breweries and distilleries and live music. I’m on the board of the downtown Frederick partnership, which is our main street board here. And they do live at five in the summertime. So if you’re a musician fan and you want just a variety of music, we have a live at five and a summer concert series. So a live at five is on Thursdays and summer concert series is on Sundays with the city of Frederick. And it’s a free concert every Sunday night during the summertime. I mean, you just can’t beat it. But yeah, so I would say come in on a Thursday, stay, leave on Monday and be able to experience all the things.

 

Amanda [00:26:06]:

So fun. Well, thank you so much, Sandy, for spending some time. I think we’ve got a lot of great tidbits here for folks and really appreciate you.

 

Sandy [00:26:15]:

Thank you. This was fun. I could sit here and talk to you all day, Amanda, thank you.

 

Amanda [00:26:19]:

I could, too. Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast where we take you inside America’s best cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time. From Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.