May 13, 2025 • 21 mins
In this episode, we talk with Jennifer Wakefield, Greater Richmond Partnership, about the power of perception research in economic development. Discover how Richmond, Virginia, uses annual surveys of site selectors and corporate decision makers to put their best foot forward in site selection.
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.
Be sure to subscribe so you’re alerted when we release new episodes. Learn more about us at LivabilityMedia.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email host Amanda Ellis at aellis@livability.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jennifer [00:00:10]:
Knowing not just what your strengths and weaknesses are, but knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the communities that you are competing against on a regular basis. And that can really be a key differentiator when marketing your community. (00:00):
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Amanda [00:00:25]: That's the voice of Jennifer Wakefield, President and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership in Richmond, Virginia. How do site selectors and corporate location decision makers really perceive your city? Jennifer joins us to share about the annual perception study her team conducts to track just that, the area's image, identify strengths and weaknesses, and inform their marketing strategies. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com and with that, let's jump in. Welcome, Jennifer, to Inside America's Best Cities. Super excited to have you. Thanks for taking some time out of your day. (00:01):
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Jennifer [00:01:07]: Thanks for having me. (00:02):
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Amanda [00:01:08]: So we are here today to talk about an annual study that you all do, reaching site selectors, corporate decision makers, all of those VIP folks, I guess you could say, in our field. So start with just kind of an overview of that, you know, who are those folks? What are you asking them? Some background? (00:03):
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Jennifer [00:01:28]: Sure. I located in Richmond, Virginia in 2017 and we had not done any in depth perception research in a number of years. And that is what my master's degree is in. And my background is all marketing. And so I wanted to make sure that before we did anything major from a marketing perspective, we knew exactly what our targets were thinking. So we wanted to talk to corporate executives and to site location consultants. For a number of years, I have worked with Development Counselors International to do quantitative as well as qualitative research, in the past. We began doing and designing a series of research that we do now annually. We started it. The first one was in 2018, then we skipped over 2019 and 2020. 2019 was because we decided to do more qualitative research. We started with quantitative, then went to qualitative research, and then 2020 happened. And then we took a pause and came back and we've done it since 21, 22, 23, 24. And we're just getting ready to kick it off again. (00:04):
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Amanda [00:02:33]: All right, so how do you actually promote this and hear from the people you want to hear from? (00:05):
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Jennifer [00:02:39]: So we developed a survey based on questions that we want to know the answers to, like how likely are you to consider the Richmond market versus competitor markets, both for corporate executives as well as for site location consultants? We ask them. Not only that, but has Richmond made it to the short list in the past? Have you considered Richmond previously? What are the strengths and what are the weaknesses for the market? (00:06):
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Amanda [00:03:05]: Love that. Because those are things like you could have been like the third choice for somewhere and you never knew, right? (00:07):
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Jennifer [00:03:11]: Correct. (00:08):
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Amanda [00:03:12]: So helping bring some of that out, I love that. So you've tracked this information over time and it sounds like you've seen some improvement over the time that you've been doing it. Can you talk about that? (00:09):
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Jennifer [00:03:24]: Yeah, sure. We've been very intentional with our efforts with site location consultants. There's only really about 200 site location consultants across the country. It's mainly a US thing. And we know who they are, right? We go to the Site Selectors Guild. We go to the area development conferences. We see them at IAMC, right. We know who they are. In fact, I'm a couple floors down from one of them. So Chris Lloyd from McGuireWoods is a few floors above me in Richmond, Virginia. Right. And so we know who they are, but what we want to know is what is it that they're truly thinking? Because they are involved in about half of all corporate decisions. Right. They are hired out by these corporate executives to do the site searches or at least to validate the findings there. And so in 2021, we asked, “Has Richmond been considered previously?” And site location consultants, 20% of them said yes, by focusing very intentionally. And we bring anywhere between 8 and 16 site location consultants here per year for a fam tour. And then we've also recruited five major site location consultant conferences to this market in the last five years. So by 2024, that number went from 20% up to 60% among site location consultants. So consideration of Richmond increased substantially, which is fantastic. Conversely, corporate executives, they're a little harder to pin down. You don't know exactly who they are. There's many different companies, there's many different industry clusters that we're going after. And so the data was not anywhere what we would have liked to have seen in 2021, when we asked corporate executives if they had considered a Richmond location, 2… 2% of corporate executives said yes. And so that was pretty eye opening. By 2024, that number increased to about 30%. And so that's a big jump. It's still obviously less than one in three. So we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to corporate executives. (00:10):
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Amanda [00:05:21]: Clever strategy, too. What you mentioned about bringing the conferences to your city, that's awesome. So what happened, what type of work happened in the interim of these surveys that you feel like? I mean, I guess you just described some of it, but that really boosted that perception, especially for those corporate decision makers that were on the lower, way lower side. (00:11):
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Jennifer [00:05:44]: I mean, I think some of it is that success just begets success. And I think everyone in economic Development found that 2022 was the best year that they had ever had. The same held true here in Richmond, Virginia. We had many really fantastic project, very large projects as well. And the more that we amplified and talked about the successes that we did have, the more interest there was from other companies. What we have seen is that since the pandemic, things started to slow down a little bit as we approached the election timeframe. But that's no different than any other election at the national level. Since the election occurred, since we had a definitive president, we knew who it was going to be, things picked back up substantially after the election. And so what we saw was almost 2022 numbers again between November and January. Since January, things have also been extremely, extremely busy. It was probably a little busier between November and the January time frame than it has been since January. And some of that is just because there's a lot of positive momentum and there's some negative momentum at the same time. So it's kind of, as I've been explaining it, the best of times and the worst of times. (00:12):
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Amanda [00:06:49]: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So these survey findings that you've been gathering and tracking, do you typically just keep those for internal purposes or do you publish those in your market for your stakeholders to see too? (00:13):
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Jennifer [00:07:05]: We don't publish them, but we do share them with our board and with our investors and our stakeholders. We do talks around the community. We have done, you know, talks about marketing, and we'll share some of that information, but we really utilize that to galvanize. Here's who we're competing against, and here's how they stack up right now in comparison. Here's the budget of those competing markets, and here's what our budget is. So we've utilized that from a fundraising standpoint in investor relations to gain more private sector dollars and to recognize that monetarily, the budget for economic development marketing in Virginia is just not what it is in some of our peer states. And we need to do a better job, and that requires money to do that. (00:14):
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Amanda [00:07:50]: Yeah, so true. (00:15):
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Jennifer [00:07:52]: What we've also done is taken that to look at, you know, what are some of the biggest weaknesses that our market has. And one of them is just that among corporate executives, they just don't have a perception of the Richmond, Virginia market. Now, part of that is because there are 90 different Richmonds around the world. In fact, we were named after Richmond in London, the UK. And so we need to do a better job of telling people all of the amazing things that go on here. The fact that there are 12 Fortune 1000 companies that are headquartered in this market, I mean, we're a mid-sized market of 1.3 million people. We are punching above our weight class when it comes to management of companies and enterprises. And so we need residents who are here, business executives who are here to share that word, to talk about why this is a great market. We're right in between Raleigh, Durham, and DC. It is a fantastic place to be if, you know, from a quality of life standpoint for residents that live here. We're an hour to the mountains and two hours to the beach. It really is a really great location. But one of our weaknesses is really just the largest one, is that people don't know a lot about this market. So we need to do a better job of telling them. (00:16):
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Amanda [00:09:00]: Yeah, people do love that stuff though. The proximity to those different changes of scenery is something that's really appealing. So that is a great point. And the proximity to that bigger city environment as well. Got a little bit of everything. (00:17):
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Jennifer [00:09:14]: Correct. Yeah. (00:18):
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Amanda [00:09:15]: Are there significant variations in the priorities of site selectors versus corporate decision makers, would you say? How are they similar and different? (00:19):
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Jennifer [00:09:26]: Yes and no. Right. I mean, they're trying to find the right location for their client. Site location consultants are always on the go. They know a lot about a lot of different communities. They're not trying to add any communities to their list. They're trying to, you know, eliminate as many sites as fast as possible. And it always depends on what exactly it is that the client is looking for. And so if the client, you know, they're going to have needs that just differ each time based on the industry cluster that they are, based on the type of company that they are, if they're public, if they're private, et cetera. So it really just kind of depends each time. I think what I would say is that, you know, we pay attention to the results that come out each year on an annual basis, both from Area Development as well as from Site Selection magazine looking at the consultant and the corporate survey and we pay attention to what those factors are that tend to increase. We also, as we go to consultant conferences and as we talk with clients, take that information into account and utilize that in our responses. (00:20):
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Amanda [00:10:24]: Yeah, what about how you reach those two different groups? How is that different from a marketing standpoint? (00:21):
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Jennifer [00:10:33]: It is very different because we know exactly who the site location consultants are and we often do not know who the corporate executives are or it's a lot more challenging. And there's definitely way more than 200 of them. Right? I could send a text chain out, right. Like to site consultants and get responses right now, you know, we can send, you know, information that's going to be of value to them. Right? And I think that's a big difference when sometimes people who are marketing their communities, especially sometimes at the local level, is that they'll put consultants on a list that have to do with like groundbreaking and, and ribbon cuttings. Right. And they don't necessarily want to hear about, you know, a farmer's market that's going on. Right. But they do want to know about some brand new business park that has just been approved or some large site, you know, that is ready to go. They want to hear about the successes that have happened, they want to be kept in the loop. But again, they don't want it to happen too often or too infrequently. So you have to try and find the right time frame. From a corporate executive standpoint, we utilize the heck out of LinkedIn. We almost live and breathe on LinkedIn and there's a number of other tools that we utilize as well. But what we do is we look at who is involved with our organization, meaning our investor organizations and our corporate executives that live here and who are they connected to within the companies that are in the targeted industries that we're trying to attract to this market and can they help shepherd or create a connection between our two different organizations? (00:22):
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Amanda [00:12:05]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thinking about perception is really everything. Right? Unfortunately, a lot of times more important than the reality, which is where the marketing piece of things here, of course, really, really comes in. Could you talk a little bit about that? And what are effective ways, you know, thinking about our listeners in different communities to address maybe any negative perceptions that they're, they're seeing, they want to push back against. (00:23):
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Jennifer [00:12:32]: Yeah. So, and it's not just negative perceptions, but anything that anyone, as you're saying, you know, perception really does become reality. Knowing what your community's challenges are and addressing those right up front. When I first located to this market, one of the very first things that I did was create one pagers on anything that I deemed a potential issue. Right. And that could be held for, you know, many other markets. But let's just take natural disasters. Companies like stability, they don't like business disruption. And so going through and finding out the data for how likely are we to experience all of these potential natural Disasters. And I used to live in the state of Florida. Florida is known to have a few natural disasters. Virginia is not as much. Right. So in comparison, our data looks amazing. And the data for Virginia and for Richmond is we have really, really nominal natural disaster risk. And so being able to go through and not just have talking points for those things, but to have actual statistics and then what may be in the news right now or what the latest is, and then have key talking points and then sharing the information and making sure that your team and your investors are on the same message when it comes to what your talking points may be. Right. And I think sometimes this happens in different communities related to crime. Right. And people, because they may be only very insular, looking at their own community, thinking that there's a large crime problem, then if you go and you pull data from say the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, you would realize that in comparison to other markets, there's not the challenge that we really may think that there is. And you would also find that there are interesting things. That Uniform Crime Report is anything but uniform. (00:24):
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Amanda [00:14:19]: Yes. And also it's one of those things like I don't think anywhere has a zero crime score. Right? Like it doesn't exist. So taking that into account too, and… (00:25):
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Jennifer [00:14:29]: I mean that's another thing is knowing not just what your strengths and weaknesses are, but knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the communities that you are competing against on a regular basis. And that can really be a key differentiating when marketing your community. (00:26):
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Amanda [00:14:41]: Yeah, that's so true. And taking those things and just meeting them more head on. I like that advice. If you could only give one piece of advice for our listeners, you know, people looking to improve their site selection consideration in general, what would you say? (00:27):
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Jennifer [00:14:57]: Research, research, research and do more research. I would also say, you know, take those things and plan them out for sure. What are the potential questions that a client is going to ask that you don't want to have to answer? Right. But you're going to have to answer them. So can you have something that is based in fact that you may be able to explain in some instances? So taking, you know, the crime data. Right, like looking at crime data. Yes. Here, here is the number. Here's how it stacks in comparison. Right. So having some context for anything that may not be favorable for your community makes sense. (00:28):
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Amanda [00:15:34]: So we always move into a fun wrap up question. But before we get to that, anything else you'd like to add about the survey or other things you'd like to leave us with that we didn't cover so far. (00:29):
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Jennifer [00:15:48]: I would just say, you know, if you're going to survey your constituents, you know, site consultants and corporate executives do it year over year on an annual basis to see what moves and what doesn't move. Right? And you'll start to see a lot of data and analysis. I also am a nerd, so because I told you my master's degree is in this, I will always get the raw data and I will go through and look at how does this calculate according to who took the survey? Not just is it a site consultant, but what state or country may they be based out of? Is it a person? You know, what is the gender? What is the racial makeup of the person who's answering this question? Is that causing them to answer in a certain way? (00:30):
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Amanda [00:16:32]: Yes. And kind of comparing all of that together, we do a little bit of our own research at livability, looking at, you know, relocation habits in general. And I typically spearhead those and don't really have a stats background. But I have learned what you're saying about just like look for the, look for all of that and kind of what you can connect the dots on in a helpful way. That is so true. (00:31):
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Jennifer [00:16:56]: And how you can tell a story from that data. (00:32):
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Amanda [00:16:59]: Yes. And when you're, when you're having people take this... I know surveys are hard because we're all kind of like overly, overly surveyed. Right. And so you don't want it to be too long. There's a lot of considerations with that. But do you include any open ended questions that you can look at their responses? (00:33):
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Jennifer [00:17:14]: We try and limit the open endedness. Unless we are trying to pull more like qualitative information out of it. But we do utilize both closed-ended and open. (00:34):
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Amanda [00:17:23]: Yeah. And again, I know when we've built surveys, yeah. It's like the open ended ones are the ones that everyone gets kind of annoyed with. Right. Because you're just like, I want to click A, B or C, I don't want to have to type a… (00:35):
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Jennifer [00:17:33]: Well, it depends on how many you make that are required too. Right. I mean you want to have a survey that can be completed within a specific amount of time, you know, in not too many pages. Right. I mean I just got back from a vacation and I got a, you know, survey and it's like, okay, like I'll start to take this. But then it's like, okay, it's been five full minutes and I'm like a quarter of the way through. Like I'm gonna stop. (00:36):
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Amanda [00:17:56]: Yep. (00:37):
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Jennifer [00:17:57]: Too much, too much. (00:38):
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Amanda [00:17:59]: You are so right. But that being said, times that we have used an open-ended question, sometimes it's… and I guess it also depends on how big your sample size is. But it can be really interesting what you can glean from that, even though it can take some time to cull. (00:39):
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Jennifer [00:18:13]: Through it well, and stuff that will come into the open ended is why we switched and did qualitative. So like that first year we did quantitative in 2018, based on that data, we wanted to dig in more so into the qualitative data. And if you're beginning to launch a marketing campaign, honestly, you need to do both qualitative and quantitative and you need to see what the qualitative says. So, you know, in a previous life, in a previous campaign, our campaign literally came out of the qualitative research from that. (00:40):
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Amanda [00:18:43]: Yeah. Well, I love using it to guide and inform what you're doing. Right. Because it gives you a way to know the answers to those questions instead of guessing at them. (00:41):
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Jennifer [00:18:53]: Yes, exactly. (00:42):
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Amanda [00:18:55]: So I mentioned we always wrap up with a fun question. You, of course, are based in Richmond. If someone were visiting for the first time, what is a bucket list item that they should make sure that they do? (00:43):
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Jennifer [00:19:07]: I would say the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is absolutely phenomenal. It really is a world class museum. But having come from the state of Florida, where, you know, I said, you know, once upon a time, you know, there were, you know, explorers in the 1500s and then, you know, in 1971, Walt decided to, you know, X marks the spot. There's so much history that's here. Just kind of strolling around through downtown. You can even take, there's a tuk tuk, which is like a little almost like a golf cart type vehicle that they do downtown. And they do like scavenger hunts and things. And see a canal that was designed by George Washington. There's the state capitol, which is just over this way a tiny bit that was designed by Thomas Jefferson after he got back from France. All the federal buildings that are in D.C. are designed after that building. And so it's for me really, really cool to see all of that history that I just didn't see growing up in the state of Florida. So I would do that, but then also visit the Museum of Fine Arts. (00:44):
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Amanda [00:20:05]: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for spending a few minutes. I think this will be a great one for our listeners and we really appreciate you. (00:45):
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Jennifer [00:20:12]: All right, thank you. I appreciate it. (00:46):
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Amanda [00:20:18]: 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 aellis@livability.com. Until next time, from Livability, I'm Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America's most promising places. (00:47):
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Amanda [00:00:25]: That's the voice of Jennifer Wakefield, President and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership in Richmond, Virginia. How do site selectors and corporate location decision makers really perceive your city? Jennifer joins us to share about the annual perception study her team conducts to track just that, the area's image, identify strengths and weaknesses, and inform their marketing strategies. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com and with that, let's jump in. Welcome, Jennifer, to Inside America's Best Cities. Super excited to have you. Thanks for taking some time out of your day. (00:01):
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Jennifer [00:01:07]: Thanks for having me. (00:02):
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Amanda [00:01:08]: So we are here today to talk about an annual study that you all do, reaching site selectors, corporate decision makers, all of those VIP folks, I guess you could say, in our field. So start with just kind of an overview of that, you know, who are those folks? What are you asking them? Some background? (00:03):
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Jennifer [00:01:28]: Sure. I located in Richmond, Virginia in 2017 and we had not done any in depth perception research in a number of years. And that is what my master's degree is in. And my background is all marketing. And so I wanted to make sure that before we did anything major from a marketing perspective, we knew exactly what our targets were thinking. So we wanted to talk to corporate executives and to site location consultants. For a number of years, I have worked with Development Counselors International to do quantitative as well as qualitative research, in the past. We began doing and designing a series of research that we do now annually. We started it. The first one was in 2018, then we skipped over 2019 and 2020. 2019 was because we decided to do more qualitative research. We started with quantitative, then went to qualitative research, and then 2020 happened. And then we took a pause and came back and we've done it since 21, 22, 23, 24. And we're just getting ready to kick it off again. (00:04):
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Amanda [00:02:33]: All right, so how do you actually promote this and hear from the people you want to hear from? (00:05):
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Jennifer [00:02:39]: So we developed a survey based on questions that we want to know the answers to, like how likely are you to consider the Richmond market versus competitor markets, both for corporate executives as well as for site location consultants? We ask them. Not only that, but has Richmond made it to the short list in the past? Have you considered Richmond previously? What are the strengths and what are the weaknesses for the market? (00:06):
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Amanda [00:03:05]: Love that. Because those are things like you could have been like the third choice for somewhere and you never knew, right? (00:07):
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Jennifer [00:03:11]: Correct. (00:08):
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Amanda [00:03:12]: So helping bring some of that out, I love that. So you've tracked this information over time and it sounds like you've seen some improvement over the time that you've been doing it. Can you talk about that? (00:09):
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Jennifer [00:03:24]: Yeah, sure. We've been very intentional with our efforts with site location consultants. There's only really about 200 site location consultants across the country. It's mainly a US thing. And we know who they are, right? We go to the Site Selectors Guild. We go to the area development conferences. We see them at IAMC, right. We know who they are. In fact, I'm a couple floors down from one of them. So Chris Lloyd from McGuireWoods is a few floors above me in Richmond, Virginia. Right. And so we know who they are, but what we want to know is what is it that they're truly thinking? Because they are involved in about half of all corporate decisions. Right. They are hired out by these corporate executives to do the site searches or at least to validate the findings there. And so in 2021, we asked, “Has Richmond been considered previously?” And site location consultants, 20% of them said yes, by focusing very intentionally. And we bring anywhere between 8 and 16 site location consultants here per year for a fam tour. And then we've also recruited five major site location consultant conferences to this market in the last five years. So by 2024, that number went from 20% up to 60% among site location consultants. So consideration of Richmond increased substantially, which is fantastic. Conversely, corporate executives, they're a little harder to pin down. You don't know exactly who they are. There's many different companies, there's many different industry clusters that we're going after. And so the data was not anywhere what we would have liked to have seen in 2021, when we asked corporate executives if they had considered a Richmond location, 2… 2% of corporate executives said yes. And so that was pretty eye opening. By 2024, that number increased to about 30%. And so that's a big jump. It's still obviously less than one in three. So we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to corporate executives. (00:10):
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Amanda [00:05:21]: Clever strategy, too. What you mentioned about bringing the conferences to your city, that's awesome. So what happened, what type of work happened in the interim of these surveys that you feel like? I mean, I guess you just described some of it, but that really boosted that perception, especially for those corporate decision makers that were on the lower, way lower side. (00:11):
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Jennifer [00:05:44]: I mean, I think some of it is that success just begets success. And I think everyone in economic Development found that 2022 was the best year that they had ever had. The same held true here in Richmond, Virginia. We had many really fantastic project, very large projects as well. And the more that we amplified and talked about the successes that we did have, the more interest there was from other companies. What we have seen is that since the pandemic, things started to slow down a little bit as we approached the election timeframe. But that's no different than any other election at the national level. Since the election occurred, since we had a definitive president, we knew who it was going to be, things picked back up substantially after the election. And so what we saw was almost 2022 numbers again between November and January. Since January, things have also been extremely, extremely busy. It was probably a little busier between November and the January time frame than it has been since January. And some of that is just because there's a lot of positive momentum and there's some negative momentum at the same time. So it's kind of, as I've been explaining it, the best of times and the worst of times. (00:12):
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Amanda [00:06:49]: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So these survey findings that you've been gathering and tracking, do you typically just keep those for internal purposes or do you publish those in your market for your stakeholders to see too? (00:13):
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Jennifer [00:07:05]: We don't publish them, but we do share them with our board and with our investors and our stakeholders. We do talks around the community. We have done, you know, talks about marketing, and we'll share some of that information, but we really utilize that to galvanize. Here's who we're competing against, and here's how they stack up right now in comparison. Here's the budget of those competing markets, and here's what our budget is. So we've utilized that from a fundraising standpoint in investor relations to gain more private sector dollars and to recognize that monetarily, the budget for economic development marketing in Virginia is just not what it is in some of our peer states. And we need to do a better job, and that requires money to do that. (00:14):
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Amanda [00:07:50]: Yeah, so true. (00:15):
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Jennifer [00:07:52]: What we've also done is taken that to look at, you know, what are some of the biggest weaknesses that our market has. And one of them is just that among corporate executives, they just don't have a perception of the Richmond, Virginia market. Now, part of that is because there are 90 different Richmonds around the world. In fact, we were named after Richmond in London, the UK. And so we need to do a better job of telling people all of the amazing things that go on here. The fact that there are 12 Fortune 1000 companies that are headquartered in this market, I mean, we're a mid-sized market of 1.3 million people. We are punching above our weight class when it comes to management of companies and enterprises. And so we need residents who are here, business executives who are here to share that word, to talk about why this is a great market. We're right in between Raleigh, Durham, and DC. It is a fantastic place to be if, you know, from a quality of life standpoint for residents that live here. We're an hour to the mountains and two hours to the beach. It really is a really great location. But one of our weaknesses is really just the largest one, is that people don't know a lot about this market. So we need to do a better job of telling them. (00:16):
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Amanda [00:09:00]: Yeah, people do love that stuff though. The proximity to those different changes of scenery is something that's really appealing. So that is a great point. And the proximity to that bigger city environment as well. Got a little bit of everything. (00:17):
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Jennifer [00:09:14]: Correct. Yeah. (00:18):
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Amanda [00:09:15]: Are there significant variations in the priorities of site selectors versus corporate decision makers, would you say? How are they similar and different? (00:19):
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Jennifer [00:09:26]: Yes and no. Right. I mean, they're trying to find the right location for their client. Site location consultants are always on the go. They know a lot about a lot of different communities. They're not trying to add any communities to their list. They're trying to, you know, eliminate as many sites as fast as possible. And it always depends on what exactly it is that the client is looking for. And so if the client, you know, they're going to have needs that just differ each time based on the industry cluster that they are, based on the type of company that they are, if they're public, if they're private, et cetera. So it really just kind of depends each time. I think what I would say is that, you know, we pay attention to the results that come out each year on an annual basis, both from Area Development as well as from Site Selection magazine looking at the consultant and the corporate survey and we pay attention to what those factors are that tend to increase. We also, as we go to consultant conferences and as we talk with clients, take that information into account and utilize that in our responses. (00:20):
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Amanda [00:10:24]: Yeah, what about how you reach those two different groups? How is that different from a marketing standpoint? (00:21):
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Jennifer [00:10:33]: It is very different because we know exactly who the site location consultants are and we often do not know who the corporate executives are or it's a lot more challenging. And there's definitely way more than 200 of them. Right? I could send a text chain out, right. Like to site consultants and get responses right now, you know, we can send, you know, information that's going to be of value to them. Right? And I think that's a big difference when sometimes people who are marketing their communities, especially sometimes at the local level, is that they'll put consultants on a list that have to do with like groundbreaking and, and ribbon cuttings. Right. And they don't necessarily want to hear about, you know, a farmer's market that's going on. Right. But they do want to know about some brand new business park that has just been approved or some large site, you know, that is ready to go. They want to hear about the successes that have happened, they want to be kept in the loop. But again, they don't want it to happen too often or too infrequently. So you have to try and find the right time frame. From a corporate executive standpoint, we utilize the heck out of LinkedIn. We almost live and breathe on LinkedIn and there's a number of other tools that we utilize as well. But what we do is we look at who is involved with our organization, meaning our investor organizations and our corporate executives that live here and who are they connected to within the companies that are in the targeted industries that we're trying to attract to this market and can they help shepherd or create a connection between our two different organizations? (00:22):
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Amanda [00:12:05]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thinking about perception is really everything. Right? Unfortunately, a lot of times more important than the reality, which is where the marketing piece of things here, of course, really, really comes in. Could you talk a little bit about that? And what are effective ways, you know, thinking about our listeners in different communities to address maybe any negative perceptions that they're, they're seeing, they want to push back against. (00:23):
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Jennifer [00:12:32]: Yeah. So, and it's not just negative perceptions, but anything that anyone, as you're saying, you know, perception really does become reality. Knowing what your community's challenges are and addressing those right up front. When I first located to this market, one of the very first things that I did was create one pagers on anything that I deemed a potential issue. Right. And that could be held for, you know, many other markets. But let's just take natural disasters. Companies like stability, they don't like business disruption. And so going through and finding out the data for how likely are we to experience all of these potential natural Disasters. And I used to live in the state of Florida. Florida is known to have a few natural disasters. Virginia is not as much. Right. So in comparison, our data looks amazing. And the data for Virginia and for Richmond is we have really, really nominal natural disaster risk. And so being able to go through and not just have talking points for those things, but to have actual statistics and then what may be in the news right now or what the latest is, and then have key talking points and then sharing the information and making sure that your team and your investors are on the same message when it comes to what your talking points may be. Right. And I think sometimes this happens in different communities related to crime. Right. And people, because they may be only very insular, looking at their own community, thinking that there's a large crime problem, then if you go and you pull data from say the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, you would realize that in comparison to other markets, there's not the challenge that we really may think that there is. And you would also find that there are interesting things. That Uniform Crime Report is anything but uniform. (00:24):
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Amanda [00:14:19]: Yes. And also it's one of those things like I don't think anywhere has a zero crime score. Right? Like it doesn't exist. So taking that into account too, and… (00:25):
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Jennifer [00:14:29]: I mean that's another thing is knowing not just what your strengths and weaknesses are, but knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the communities that you are competing against on a regular basis. And that can really be a key differentiating when marketing your community. (00:26):
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Amanda [00:14:41]: Yeah, that's so true. And taking those things and just meeting them more head on. I like that advice. If you could only give one piece of advice for our listeners, you know, people looking to improve their site selection consideration in general, what would you say? (00:27):
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Jennifer [00:14:57]: Research, research, research and do more research. I would also say, you know, take those things and plan them out for sure. What are the potential questions that a client is going to ask that you don't want to have to answer? Right. But you're going to have to answer them. So can you have something that is based in fact that you may be able to explain in some instances? So taking, you know, the crime data. Right, like looking at crime data. Yes. Here, here is the number. Here's how it stacks in comparison. Right. So having some context for anything that may not be favorable for your community makes sense. (00:28):
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Amanda [00:15:34]: So we always move into a fun wrap up question. But before we get to that, anything else you'd like to add about the survey or other things you'd like to leave us with that we didn't cover so far. (00:29):
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Jennifer [00:15:48]: I would just say, you know, if you're going to survey your constituents, you know, site consultants and corporate executives do it year over year on an annual basis to see what moves and what doesn't move. Right? And you'll start to see a lot of data and analysis. I also am a nerd, so because I told you my master's degree is in this, I will always get the raw data and I will go through and look at how does this calculate according to who took the survey? Not just is it a site consultant, but what state or country may they be based out of? Is it a person? You know, what is the gender? What is the racial makeup of the person who's answering this question? Is that causing them to answer in a certain way? (00:30):
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Amanda [00:16:32]: Yes. And kind of comparing all of that together, we do a little bit of our own research at livability, looking at, you know, relocation habits in general. And I typically spearhead those and don't really have a stats background. But I have learned what you're saying about just like look for the, look for all of that and kind of what you can connect the dots on in a helpful way. That is so true. (00:31):
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Jennifer [00:16:56]: And how you can tell a story from that data. (00:32):
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Amanda [00:16:59]: Yes. And when you're, when you're having people take this... I know surveys are hard because we're all kind of like overly, overly surveyed. Right. And so you don't want it to be too long. There's a lot of considerations with that. But do you include any open ended questions that you can look at their responses? (00:33):
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Jennifer [00:17:14]: We try and limit the open endedness. Unless we are trying to pull more like qualitative information out of it. But we do utilize both closed-ended and open. (00:34):
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Amanda [00:17:23]: Yeah. And again, I know when we've built surveys, yeah. It's like the open ended ones are the ones that everyone gets kind of annoyed with. Right. Because you're just like, I want to click A, B or C, I don't want to have to type a… (00:35):
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Jennifer [00:17:33]: Well, it depends on how many you make that are required too. Right. I mean you want to have a survey that can be completed within a specific amount of time, you know, in not too many pages. Right. I mean I just got back from a vacation and I got a, you know, survey and it's like, okay, like I'll start to take this. But then it's like, okay, it's been five full minutes and I'm like a quarter of the way through. Like I'm gonna stop. (00:36):
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Amanda [00:17:56]: Yep. (00:37):
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Jennifer [00:17:57]: Too much, too much. (00:38):
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Amanda [00:17:59]: You are so right. But that being said, times that we have used an open-ended question, sometimes it's… and I guess it also depends on how big your sample size is. But it can be really interesting what you can glean from that, even though it can take some time to cull. (00:39):
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Jennifer [00:18:13]: Through it well, and stuff that will come into the open ended is why we switched and did qualitative. So like that first year we did quantitative in 2018, based on that data, we wanted to dig in more so into the qualitative data. And if you're beginning to launch a marketing campaign, honestly, you need to do both qualitative and quantitative and you need to see what the qualitative says. So, you know, in a previous life, in a previous campaign, our campaign literally came out of the qualitative research from that. (00:40):
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Amanda [00:18:43]: Yeah. Well, I love using it to guide and inform what you're doing. Right. Because it gives you a way to know the answers to those questions instead of guessing at them. (00:41):
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Jennifer [00:18:53]: Yes, exactly. (00:42):
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Amanda [00:18:55]: So I mentioned we always wrap up with a fun question. You, of course, are based in Richmond. If someone were visiting for the first time, what is a bucket list item that they should make sure that they do? (00:43):
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Jennifer [00:19:07]: I would say the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is absolutely phenomenal. It really is a world class museum. But having come from the state of Florida, where, you know, I said, you know, once upon a time, you know, there were, you know, explorers in the 1500s and then, you know, in 1971, Walt decided to, you know, X marks the spot. There's so much history that's here. Just kind of strolling around through downtown. You can even take, there's a tuk tuk, which is like a little almost like a golf cart type vehicle that they do downtown. And they do like scavenger hunts and things. And see a canal that was designed by George Washington. There's the state capitol, which is just over this way a tiny bit that was designed by Thomas Jefferson after he got back from France. All the federal buildings that are in D.C. are designed after that building. And so it's for me really, really cool to see all of that history that I just didn't see growing up in the state of Florida. So I would do that, but then also visit the Museum of Fine Arts. (00:44):
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Amanda [00:20:05]: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for spending a few minutes. I think this will be a great one for our listeners and we really appreciate you. (00:45):
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Jennifer [00:20:12]: All right, thank you. I appreciate it. (00:46):
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Amanda [00:20:18]: 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 aellis@livability.com. Until next time, from Livability, I'm Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America's most promising places. (00:47):
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