Sharing Marquette County’s ‘Vision’

Posted by Lake Superior Community Partnership on September 15, 2016

Amy 2 Each summer, the LSCP releases the Vision Magazine, which showcases the businesses and organizations that make Marquette County tick. We have a great partnership with the Mining Journal who handles the advertising and story content and with Northern Michigan University’s Marketing and Communication’s department where students provide us with the design and layout. We are thankful to both for helping us create an outstanding marketing piece that showcases our region.

Our main focus with the magazine is to showcase why Marquette County and the Upper Peninsula are great places to do business. Our target audience is site selectors, developers and others considering this area as a location for their company to relocate, expand or start up. This is a “snapshot” that hopefully leaves them wanting more. Just a few highlights of this year’s magazine are the groundbreaking of the new UP Health System – Marquette, 906 Technologies, Nestledown Bed and Breakfast, NeuroTrainer and the Iron Ore Heritage Trail. We like to feature a mix of new business, businesses who continue to thrive and grow here and exciting updates around our quality of place.

I know I have written about our work in business attraction in the past. While it is a very important part of our economic development portfolio, it is also very expensive and yields little results. We typically spend 5-10% of our resources on attraction which is appropriate for our region. Business retention, expansion and start up efforts have a greater return on investment. Think of your customer base. Isn’t it more productive to retain and grow their business as they are already familiar with your product and service, than to attract another? You need both to be successful but should be strategic in the use of your resources. Below are a few things we do throughout the year in business attraction.

E-Newsletter to Site Selectors – throughout the year we send email updates to our 487 site selectors around the country. Information is typically on recent investment made in the area, awards and recognition given to the county and anything that showcases the wonderful place that we live!
Reply to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) – we review RFPs from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) that they receive from site selectors. We promptly reply whenever our region meets the RFP criteria.
Zoom Prospector – Zoom is the database that we use to organize commercial properties available for sale or lease. Properties from the MLS are automatically uploaded. Others are loaded by our staff as we become aware of them. Keeping this database up to date is important to us so we can quickly reply to RFPs, businesses looking for space and help businesses fill vacant properties. Contact us at 906.226.6591 if you’d like to get a property listed. It is free of charge!
International Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) – I am honored to serve on the board of the IEDC and as an active member participating in conferences and committees that get the LSCP and Marquette County in front of many site selectors throughout the year. When our team travels, we are always prepared with information on our area, including Vision Magazines, and keep in touch with the site selectors we meet with once we are back in our office.

To view this year’s Vision Magazine, visit marquette.org and click on Vision Magazine under Live & Work. If you’d like to have hard copies to give out in your office or have an idea for the 2017/18 magazine, contact us at 906.226.6591.

Amy Clickner, CEO, writes a bi-weekly column for the Mining Journal.