Five Basics of Marketing Your Community

Many chambers and their marketing teams are charged with marketing the community, in addition to handling member marketing benefits, local PR, promoting chamber programs, and any number of other responsibilities. It’s a lot to manage for even the most organized and seasoned professionals. Of course, you want to push out your community’s positive stories through PR, social media and other platforms available to you, but we’ve got five bonus tips on where to start when it comes to marketing your city or region.

1. Scope out your digital footprint. If you’ve never audited your digital footprint, it’s a great exercise. Experiment with Googling phrases about living in your community and related search terms. Consider using private browsing, as your search history can affect results, and you want to see what someone would find who isn’t regularly searching for information about your community. Consider: Are important parts of your community’s narrative missing in your search results? What's awesome about your city that you're not seeing reflected? Let that guide the stories you choose to tell. You also may want to review Google’s AI summary for some of your search phrases to get an even more robust perspective.

2. Identify what makes you special. Spend time identifying what makes your community unique – what sets it apart from other communities of its size? Why do you love living there? The answers to questions like these can help shape your community marketing efforts.

3. Decide who you’re trying to impress. Knowing your audience goes a long way with focusing marketing efforts, and consider going deeper than a general audience. Some ideas for specific audience segments, in terms of talent attraction, might be:

• Local students you want to retain after graduation
• Entrepreneurs
• People who love the outdoors, or any other unique selling point of your community
• Types of workers your community needs (like health care, tech, etc.)
• Think regionally — for example, target people from neighboring states or nearby cities instead of the opposite coast.

4. Consider branded content. Branded content can be key for letting the rest of the world know why your area is a great place to live, work and visit.

At Livability, we offer turn-key services to create your Livability magazine, a newsstand-quality publication highlighting your region’s key success metrics and advantages as a place to do business and a place to live. Each magazine is filled with stunning photography and engaging articles, plus our digital presence extends your content's reach. Our Livability.com platform receives millions of visits annually, giving your region access to local and national audiences. A dedicated section of Livability.com showcases your area's business climate, quality of life and tourism hotspots and reaches people across the country who are searching for that information, including a specific audience of people looking to move, retire to or work remotely from a new place.

5. Create conversation on and offline. In addition to getting the messaging of your community out, make sure you’re also creating opportunities for dialogue with people who want to know more.

On social media, be sure someone monitors your platforms and responds to comments or messages. Also, community influencer programs can be a great way to connect prospective talent with real locals. Some examples of these include the Indianapolis Indyfluencers and the Live in Lou City Champs.

Livability Media is a full-service media and content marketing company focused on bringing talented individuals to your city. We work with chambers of commerce, economic development groups and city governments to tell the unique stories of cities, regions and states through custom online, print and digital content programs.