The challenge of attracting businesses to a region is one of the toughest aspects of economic development. While iconic regions like London or Silicon Valley often dominate foreign direct investment (FDI) headlines, the reality is starkly different for most communities.
Small to midsize economic development organizations (EDOs), which play a pivotal role in fostering regional growth, often grapple with resource and time constraints. In this article, we'll delve into how the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP) tackles these challenges. We'll learn how they use data to optimize their time and business attraction efforts.
Nestled on the banks of the Potomac River, a stone's throw from Washington, D.C, Alexandria, Virginia boasts cobblestone streets, historic architecture, a vibrant waterfront, and a thriving community. It’s recognized as a small city with a big cosmopolitan vibe.
AEDP is a public-private partnership that promotes the City of Alexandria as a premier location for businesses. Their primary objective is to bring businesses to Alexandria. Operating with a team of 15 members, effective time management is crucial.
The Time-Intensive Task of Event Preparation
One significant hurdle the AEDP grappled with was the laborious nature of event preparation. Trade shows are one of the most demanding and financially intensive facets of a business attraction strategy.
Historically, AEDP would invest roughly 25 to 40 hours in compiling a roster of potential prospects and orchestrating pre-conference meetings for a single event. With their travel schedule encompassing numerous events annually, the cumulative time commitment became substantial.
Getting Their Time Back
In response to this challenge, AEDP adopted Gazelle, Lightcast’s business intelligence platform. Gazelle ranks companies based on their potential for expansion. This data helps EDOs build targeted prospect lists aligned with a region's interests. With Gazelle, AEDP drastically reduced event preparation time from weeks of work to minutes.
“Attending only twelve events per year gives us a return of over 4X the investment in Gazelle between our time spent in research and planning,” said Collins Marshall, Senior Director of Business Development at AEDP.
“It took the average time of gathering intelligence from 40 hours down to about ten minutes. When you put a price tag on time and all the events we go to in a year, it’s huge. That means we can spend more time with prospects and with current businesses. It means we can do more creative endeavors. That’s really meaningful for us.” said Marshall.
The trade show feature embedded within Gazelle proved to be a game-changer for AEDP's event strategy. By honing in on the right companies to meet prior to the show, AEDP improved its outcome at events.
"As an example, we successfully scheduled 15 meetings ahead of our participation in the Automate Show," Marshall explained. "Preset meetings are shown to convert at a much higher rate because chances are these people have the willingness and ability to expand their business and some sort of interest in your region.”
This shift enabled AEDP to redirect its efforts toward more impactful tasks, ultimately boosting its effectiveness in driving business growth for Alexandria.
European Expansion Opportunities
AEDP identified Europe as the geographic area with the most potential to expand to Alexandria. Identifying quality leads for such a vast territory would normally be a painstaking process that involves a lot of guesswork. By harnessing Gazelle’s sophisticated filtering capabilities, they were able to single out high-caliber companies to target.
“For instance, by using Gazelle’s G-Score (Growth Score), we isolated companies with a score of five or six. We were then able to zero in on the technology sector which aligns with our workforce. Then, we filtered it down even further to companies that have no presence in the United States,” noted Marshall. “This allowed us to focus on 1900 promising companies. This has been invaluable for us.”
Gazelle also assists them in deciding which shows to participate in and which ones to skip. Using the trade show feature, they can identify current attendees or past participants of an event who align with their specific criteria. This data allows them to “opt out” of events, yet they can still directly target attendees.
“As an example, consider the MEDICA trade fair in Germany; we're not obligated to make the trip if we choose not to. Thanks to Gazelle, we now have the capability to arrange meetings directly on our own," said Marshall.
The Road Ahead
As AEDP continues to find more effective and innovative business attraction strategies, its success story underscores the pivotal role data plays in economic development planning. With efficient event preparation, focused outreach, and data-guided decisions, AEDP is better poised than ever to drive prosperity to the thriving city of Alexandria.
