'Tis the season for identifying your vendors for the upcoming calendar and fiscal years. This can be a daunting process for some, but nothing to get too worried about. Here are three tips to selecting the right vendor for your upcoming economic development or municipal marketing project.
1. Expertise
When you line your vendors up head-to-head, you want to compare them on the same criteria. Create a scorecard listing the things important to you and ask each vendor about those topics. If at all possible, quantify their responses in order to get a clear result. For example, if having a vendor with at least 10 years experience or a staff of 12 that can be dedicated to your project is important to you, then ask those questions. You're in charge, so don't settle for a vendor that doesn't meet your criteria.
2. Relationship
How are you greeted by this vendor? What was your first interaction like? What impression did you get from visiting their web site? Could you work with this person? Many people de-emphasize relationship in vendor selection, but it can make all the difference in the end. I recommend working with vendors you feel comfortable with, trust, and enjoy working and speaking with. This makes the process more enjoyable up front and in any bad situations, you know your vendor will do right by you.
3. Communication
Before contacting any vendor, know what you want to accomplish specifically and ask the vendor plainly if they can help you get there. Contact Lancing Direct for more information on documents you can use in this process such as creative briefs and user requirement documents. These formal outlines will ensure that you get exactly what you want with no deviations and most importantly no surprises!
The RFP/RFQ process is larger than the scope of this blog entry, but look for more information on this in a future post. In the meantime, I hope these basics can get you started! Good luck in your searches.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Thursday, November 1, 2007
3 ways to be a stronger leader for your community
It's a fact. People have an innate need to belong. More specifically, people need to be part of a successful community with a vision and goals for the future as well as a reason for being today. And every great community has one thing in common: outstanding leadership. In the absence of leadership, people will naturally seek out a different community that satisfies their needs. This could be just one reason for the prevalence of online communities today.
As an outstanding leader however, you have a plan to make sure the people you serve in your community feel connected to your administration and know that you have an interest in making them closer members of the community....right? If you don't have a plan for the members of your community, let's start here with the foundation for how to do just that.
1. Measure: A good leader knows what to measure and how to measure it. In this case, you can consider how connected people are to your administration by counting how many people attend your town meetings, or how many people call or visit your municipal office and for what reasons. Consider taking a survey or just going out on the street and asking a random sampling of residents to name the mayor and councilmembers. Elizabeth Kline has some interesting things to say about sustainable communities from a green perspective. Read what she has to say about community metrics on her blog: Smart Communities Network.
2. Plan: What percentage of your budget to you commit to building relationships with your constituents and/or businesses? When you put funds in this area, you create an opportunity to inspire loyalty to your town reducing residential defection and increasing tax revenue. A comprehensive municipal marketing plan identifies the people you need to be in communication with, how frequently to reach out them and what to say.
3. Act: The time is now! Get started with steps one and two above, and set a deadline for getting things off the ground. Find a qualified vendor who can take you through this process and help you execute your plans for maximum results.
Be a better leader: stronger, smarter, friendlier. In doing this, you can generate a very real positive impact on your community's bottom line, no matter how you decide to define and measure it!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
When was the last time you spoke to EVERYONE in your town?
There is no reason these days not to have personal relationships with every business and resident in your town. Don't have the time, you say? It's time to leverage the power of good data!
If you have a database of every resident and business in your town with some key demographic or firmographic information combined with a well-designed and automated contact matrix, you can expect to maintain meaningful relationships with everyone you serve while you sleep, eat, sit in meetings and in traffic.
In some of the earlier posts, you can find information about databases. As always, contact Lancing Direct if you need more information. Right now I want to show you how an automated contact matrix will make your life much easier (not to mention improve business and residential retention rates, reduce defection and churn, and even increase loyalty to your town)!
A contact matrix is just a fancy name for a chart that groups segments of your population (as defined by you) into tracks that make sure they receive contact from you at an appropriate frequency and with relevant messaging. As you collect more information on people in each segment, they switch tracks. For example, a new resident moving into your town would be placed in an onboarding track so that they receive a hearty letter of welcome from the mayor and important information from the council on when to put out their trash, how to license their dog, and maybe something extra about a project being worked on that will benefit them in some way. After a few weeks, a postcard is sent to them inviting them to attend an upcoming town meeting. The postcard directs them to a personalized web site where they can take a quick survey and weigh-in on topics important to them before the meeting. You collect this data and use it in the future to be sure you address their individual concerns in future contacts.
Once they've registered their dog and attended a town meeting, you might consider them officially part of the municipal body and move them into a retention track. This track may have triggers such as "remember to register to vote," "thank you for paying your water bill on time," (thank you's go a long way, no matter what it's for) "save the date for our town parade next month," and "did you know about the great new retail shop in town?"
By keeping in touch regularly with this resident, you establish a relationship as legitimate as any. You also reinforce the fact that you know and care about the people you serve and give them relevant information to make them an active member in their community. Multiply this goodwill by the number of people in your town and you've just built a whole lot of trust and love in your area!
Remember, a contact matrix is specific to your municipality and your individual goals. Municipal marketing done right will return to you in a big way, so get planning! Be sure to build quantifiable measures and tests into your program to ensure success.
If you have a database of every resident and business in your town with some key demographic or firmographic information combined with a well-designed and automated contact matrix, you can expect to maintain meaningful relationships with everyone you serve while you sleep, eat, sit in meetings and in traffic.
In some of the earlier posts, you can find information about databases. As always, contact Lancing Direct if you need more information. Right now I want to show you how an automated contact matrix will make your life much easier (not to mention improve business and residential retention rates, reduce defection and churn, and even increase loyalty to your town)!
A contact matrix is just a fancy name for a chart that groups segments of your population (as defined by you) into tracks that make sure they receive contact from you at an appropriate frequency and with relevant messaging. As you collect more information on people in each segment, they switch tracks. For example, a new resident moving into your town would be placed in an onboarding track so that they receive a hearty letter of welcome from the mayor and important information from the council on when to put out their trash, how to license their dog, and maybe something extra about a project being worked on that will benefit them in some way. After a few weeks, a postcard is sent to them inviting them to attend an upcoming town meeting. The postcard directs them to a personalized web site where they can take a quick survey and weigh-in on topics important to them before the meeting. You collect this data and use it in the future to be sure you address their individual concerns in future contacts.
Once they've registered their dog and attended a town meeting, you might consider them officially part of the municipal body and move them into a retention track. This track may have triggers such as "remember to register to vote," "thank you for paying your water bill on time," (thank you's go a long way, no matter what it's for) "save the date for our town parade next month," and "did you know about the great new retail shop in town?"
By keeping in touch regularly with this resident, you establish a relationship as legitimate as any. You also reinforce the fact that you know and care about the people you serve and give them relevant information to make them an active member in their community. Multiply this goodwill by the number of people in your town and you've just built a whole lot of trust and love in your area!
Remember, a contact matrix is specific to your municipality and your individual goals. Municipal marketing done right will return to you in a big way, so get planning! Be sure to build quantifiable measures and tests into your program to ensure success.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
who are the people in your neighborhood?
No, it's not just the title of children's song, but a very serious question if you are planning your economic development strategy for next year. As Fall gets into gear, a new year is just around the corner.
As you consider your strategies for next year, you should be able to answer the following question. Who are the people in your neighborhood? U.S. population and economic census data can give you a great indication of your municipal make-up, but don't stop there. Compile alternate sources of information to form a comprehensive report card such as birth and death rates, residential moving statistics, school and hospital rankings, crime statistics, and take an inventory of your assets (universities, open land acreage, bodies of water, proximity to highways and cities, etc.) The municipal report card you end up with should be compared to neighboring municipalities using the same criteria to determine how you rank in your region.
This data should be sliced and diced by an experienced analyst (either in-house or by an economic development consultant) in order to pull out the real gems of information. Finally, the results should be packaged in a way that will be easy for others to understand when you present it to the mayor and council, post it on your web site and publish it in the media. Good analysis should always be used to inform your future strategy and next decisions.
As you consider your strategies for next year, you should be able to answer the following question. Who are the people in your neighborhood? U.S. population and economic census data can give you a great indication of your municipal make-up, but don't stop there. Compile alternate sources of information to form a comprehensive report card such as birth and death rates, residential moving statistics, school and hospital rankings, crime statistics, and take an inventory of your assets (universities, open land acreage, bodies of water, proximity to highways and cities, etc.) The municipal report card you end up with should be compared to neighboring municipalities using the same criteria to determine how you rank in your region.
This data should be sliced and diced by an experienced analyst (either in-house or by an economic development consultant) in order to pull out the real gems of information. Finally, the results should be packaged in a way that will be easy for others to understand when you present it to the mayor and council, post it on your web site and publish it in the media. Good analysis should always be used to inform your future strategy and next decisions.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
good data makes all the difference
The importance of having good data for your municipal marketing efforts cannot be overstated. Having good data means that your list is complete, clean, up-to-date, and comprehensive. With a good database, economic developers now have a powerful tool at their disposal for direct marketing analysis and campaign execution.
Don't have a database or not sure how to use it properly? In the United States, use census data with specialty demographic fields appended by a list broker. Only append fields that will be useful for you in studying or communicating with your audience.
Contact Lancing Direct to discuss your database or go to www.lancingdirect.com/marketing101.html to learn more about marketing your municipality.
Don't have a database or not sure how to use it properly? In the United States, use census data with specialty demographic fields appended by a list broker. Only append fields that will be useful for you in studying or communicating with your audience.
Contact Lancing Direct to discuss your database or go to www.lancingdirect.com/marketing101.html to learn more about marketing your municipality.
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