The Role of Community Branding in Economic Development

Community branding is an essential component of successful economic development strategies for regions competing for new businesses, residents, and tourism revenue. Your community’s brand is its identity. Successfully translating this to others through websites, marketing collateral, and social media helps economic development organizations connect with prospects using a cohesive, authentic voice and approach. The best community brands take what makes a region unique and help everyone else see and appreciate it.

Creating a Unified Approach to Economic Development With Branding

Often communities have multiple organizations focused on economic development, local businesses, and tourism plus several governmental entities. When each pursues similar goals with different messaging, it can create a disorganized picture of a city or county. Is the city a trendy place for young workers, a quiet place to raise a family, or an affordable option for retirees? These things can all be true simultaneously, but they may hold different levels of importance when viewed alongside strategic economic development objectives.

Branding provides an opportunity to create a unified voice to further major goals in the community. For example, in Jacksonville, Illinois in 2024, Jacksonville Regional Economic Development Corporation launched a new website developed with Golden Shovel Agency to align with a multi-agency rebranding effort. Other participants included the City of Jacksonville, Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce, Jacksonville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Jacksonville Main Street. With compatible messaging and branding across all platforms, the focus then turned to a major goal – launching a talent attraction strategy. 

Providing an Authentic Voice Via Branding

Community branding offers economic development organizations the opportunity to establish an authentic narrative about a city, county, or region. This is particularly important for areas overcoming challenges as negative headlines or social media posts can overwhelm positive news. Branding shows the real community and its assets and often instills greater pride in local businesses and residents while generating new leads. 

5 Tips for Crafting an Authentic Community Brand

Stay True to Your Community

When developing a brand, it’s important to identify your strengths and reflect on these assets honestly. Ensure your community has the infrastructure, workforce, business, or quality of life metrics necessary to back up a branding campaign or risk disappointing prospects. 

Dig Deeper

To truly differentiate your region from the competition, examine initial branding ideas and find opportunities to dig deeper. For example, a city building a new brand may view growing tech jobs as a strength and eye it for branding. Digging deeper could reveal the region is an affordable tech hub with a breakout niche within tech – an opportunity for more compelling branding.

Develop a Visual Identity

After settling on a brand, it’s time to back it up with great graphics. A stellar brand needs a strong logo and visually appealing assets for social media, promotional items, presentations, press releases, and more. Remember to keep designs versatile for easy utilization across multiple platforms.

Montgomery County Community & Economic Development in Ohio more than doubled its web traffic after a website upgrade presented a cohesive visual brand. An organized, well-designed site aligning with the community’s goals better positioned local assets and infrastructure for lead generation and engagement. The site was designed through collaboration with Golden Shovel Agency and led to a 200% increase in direct links to the site.

Create Value

Branding allows a community to share its identity with the world, and it should show what the area offers to prospects. For example, branding as an affordable tech hub demonstrates value – affordability – to prospective residents and businesses.

Back-Up Your Brand With Success Stories

Highlighting success stories is a top way to solidify branding within the community. Success stories also resonate with prospective businesses, residents, and tourists. It’s one thing to tell people your community is a great place to live, work, and play, and it’s another to show them. Remember, success stories don’t have to be glitzy to connect, so locate the businesses and people exemplifying the top qualities and strengths incorporated into your brand. Tell their stories.

Golden Shovel Agency offers a team of economic development experts to assist with your branding initiatives and to help tell your story or the stories of your community. Contact us today to learn more.