Why your 'victory reports' don't sell your location?

Many investment promotion professionals think: sharing investment success stories about a location is enough to online success and investment lead generation. What a mistake.

Important news often don't generate leads

Many economic development agencies' press/social media presence is limited to sharing success stories and testimonials. These are important parts of your story, but sales (investment) lead generation requires something else. 'Victory reports' about new investments sound like advertisements - and do you watch ads on TV or click it on the Internet? Your prospects do the same. Instead sharing success stories via press/Internet, you should provide a site selection decision making support, sharing useful and interesting data about your location, and sometimes about your competing locations. Now lets see some simple rules how to do it:

#1 Talk about the buyer
Investment promotion is a kind of sales, and the nr.1 unwritten rule of sales is 'talk about the buyer'. Your prospects (members of corporate site selection teams) don't care about you but about themselves. Instead talking about your location's features, success stories and any other 'me-oriented' topics, try to talk about your prospects' benefits. Turning location's features into corporate benefits, I guess this is the key of lead generation. Instead talking about a new investment in your location, try to talk about the whys: why did this new investors decide for you? What were your main strengths (benefits) in this project, compared to competing locations? The key: try to support the prospects' decision making and achieve a long listing on this way.

#2 Say something interesting
When you convert your location's features into prospect's benefits, you should use data-driven storytelling. It means, it's not enough to create nice statements about your location ('the best .... location'), you have to build on solid data. These data can mean comparisons of competing sites, highlighting some special strengths of your locations, or simply a list of data why you are the real best ('5 reasons to invest in Slovakian automotive industry'). I am sure: your location's infrastructure, HR market, legal environment, real estate market etc. has specific benefits for your prospects, you just have to find them.

#3 Content marketing in investment promotion
If you can talk about your prospect and can do it on an interesting way, you should organize your messages. Your social media marketing or content marketing creates information channels to provide useful and interesting information to site selectors. These channels can be investment destination blog, SlideShare presentations, YouTube channel and more. The following slides provide a short insight into content marketing in general:

Your prospect faces hundreds of competing sites, we teach you how to differ.

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