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Three Digital Hacks for
Economic Development:
How Digital Economic Developers are saving time and looking smart to
investors, stakeholders, and colleagues in the digital age
Introductions
Ben WrightCEO
Community Systems
www.twitter.com/communitysys
Jeremy CaytonDirector of Marketing &
Communications
NC East Alliance
Suzie BellDirector of Marketing
Rockwall EDC
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Polo WillmanAccount Supervisor
Community Systems
www.twitter.com/communitysys
About Community Systems
• Founded 2013
• 14 employees
• 289+ active customers
InSite for EDOs:-InSite GIS
-InSite Websites
-InSite Lead IQ
Digital Economic Development
University
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InSite for EDOs
Economic Development WebsiteData and Analytics Prospect Response System
LeadIQ
Geographic Information System
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Questions we will answer
⬜ What are the best types of approaches or processes to hack?
⬜ What small steps can I take now?
⬜ How will these approaches save time and make me look good?
⬜ What is hacking, and how does it apply to economic development?
⬜ What are communities doing to hack the profession?
⬜ What resources exist for me to learn more?
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Powering Intelligent Location Decisions
A few questions we have for you…
What is hacking, and what is “growth hacking?”
Hacking is the gaining of access(wanted or unwanted) to a computer and
viewing, copying, or creating data(leaving a trace) without the intention of
destroying data or maliciously harming the computer. - Urban Dictionary
“Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing
channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient
ways to grow a business. Growth hacking refers to a set of both conventional
and unconventional marketing experiments that lead to growth of a business.”
- Wikipedia
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How does hacking apply to economic development?
“Hacking economic development is a process of rapid experimentation across
various parts of an EDO to identify the most effective, efficient ways to impact a
community positively.” - Ben Wright
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What are the best types of approaches or processes to hack?
• “Focus on doing the right things vs doing
things well. Doing things well does not
make those things important.”
Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Workweek and noted
productivity expert, gives the following advice about how
to improve across multiple areas, and “hack” your work
day:
To find the right things…
• “When in doubt, the most important to-do is
typically the one that makes you the most
uncomfortable, often including a chance of
rejection, pain or failure.”
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Why does digital feel uncomfortable?
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Powering Intelligent Location Decisions
What Communities are doing to Hack
the Profession
Three Digital Hacks for Economic Development
⬜ Developing a content calendar
⬜ Inbound marketing
⬜ Never entering another company into your CRM
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Hack #1: Inbound Marketing via HubSpot
Two Things You Cannot Do Without
1. Inbound Marketing
2. Good Cup of Coffee & #Willie
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Hack #1: Inbound Marketing via HubSpot
• Inbound marketing helps to attract, convert, close, and delight clients.
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Hack #1: SEO via HubSpot
• Find high-traffic keywords, then optimize your blog posts, landing pages, and website.
• It not keywords as much as key phrases (long-tail keywords) now.
• Full or partial questions are being asked in searches now
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Hack #1: CTA & Email Marketing via
HubSpot
• Create a call to action –something you can give to get information in order to convert
• Helps build your email contact lists
• Measure performance to optimize click-through rates over time
• Branded email marketing –newsletters, invitations, announcements, etc.
• See who opens, click-through rate, bounce rate, etc.
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Hack #1: Prospecting via HubSpot
• See companies visiting your site in real time
• Being able to see who is on your site, what pages visited, and how long they stayed on each page will help you refine your site to accommodate their usage patterns
• Create alarms/notifications when the company revisits
• See what your competitors are looking at
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Hack #2: Don’t Wait…Create!
Developing a Content Calendar
To be seen by our audience, we need to be creating and distributing content, BUT that takes time...and that is one thing we do not have enough of.
If you wait for economic development realted news to post – you may wait forever...and forever is a mighty long time...
Don’t wait...Create!
Develop a content calendar by harvesting content throughout the day/week/month/year
1. Be intentional with your posts (Plan your work – work your plan)
2. Repackage content into your own voice
3. Don’t let your own bias dictate your game plan
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CONTENT CALENDARS help with 2 important areas
TIME MANAGEMENT
• Collecting content throughout the day frees up time for other tasks
ONLINE REPUTATION (BRAND)
• Positions your EDO as a thought leader and people begin looking to you as
their source for information
• Leverage this support to recruit brand ambassadors that will help share your
EDO’s message = time savings….
Hack #2: Don’t Wait…Create!
Developing a Content Calendar
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Hack #3: Never enter another company
into your CRM system
1. The situation:
• EDOs typically are asked to track how many companies they service.
• As such, each company they touch need to be hand entered
• The average EDO services roughly 200 companies per year.
2. The problem:
• Each company can take 15-30 minutes to accurately
enter into the system.
• Then, each new interaction with the company can add
15-30 minutes.
• This can total 400 hours or more per year just entering
data into the CRM system.
• So what do most communities do? They skip it.
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Hack #3: The implications of no solution
3. The implication:
• Without any tracking, information sits only in the
heads of business developers or executives.
• Reporting out gets vague, to partners as well as
to stakeholders
• Details of relationships get lost
• Relationships that are not top of mind fall to the
bottom, and ultimately fewer companies get
serviced.
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Hack #3: Automate data entry into your
CRM system
4. The solution: Tie your website visitors into your
CRM system with tools like Lead IQ
• Currently, you only enter people who call you or email you into the
system.
• Your website services 100 times that many companies.
• You can identify 10 to 20 % of those companies, and then add
them easily to your CRM system through integration.
5. The result:
• 10 to 20x the identified companies serviced
• 75% less time to enter data for the companies you work with, up to
300 hours saved per year. This is an extra two months of work for
one person saved!
300hours saved per
year!
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Powering Intelligent Location Decisions
How these hacks save you time…
and make you look good!
1. Inbound marketing: Hundreds of hours a year, depending on staff and
community size
2. Developing a content calendar: 50 – 100 hours per year
3. Never entering another company into your CRM system: 300 hours per
year
Time Savings from Employing Hacks:
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How Employing Hacks Make You Look Good:
1. Inbound Marketing
• Everything is consistent with your EDOs brand
• View and print analytics reports to measure marketing efforts
• Track who does what for your emails and more
2. Developing a content calendar
• Shows your audience that you are an influencer
• Positions your EDO as a thought leader – people look to you as their source for information
• Leverage this support to recruit brand ambassadors to help share your EDOs message
3. Never entering another company into your CRM system:
• Better results in terms of companies served
• Easier and faster reporting
• With more detail in case stakeholders ask you
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Powering Intelligent Location Decisions
Steps you can take now
Download our free white paper
• To download visit: http://community.communitysys.com/cs_whitepaper_download
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Sign Up for Digital Economic
Development University
• NOTE: Please only create an account in our system if you plan on purchasing & completing your certification – all inactive accounts will be deleted
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• NOTE:
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Purchase Your Certification Track
• NOTE: click the green plus-sign button to apply
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Purchase Your Certification Track
Praise for Digital Economic
Development University
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Thank You!
www.communitysys.com
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