City multi-pronged marketing campaign in full swing

BY REMO ZACCAGNA

While marketing one’s own city to investors and job seekers is always important, it becomes especially vital in an economic slowdown.

To that end, the city of Grande Prairie’s multi-pronged marketing campaign is in full swing and, according to Jean-Marc Lacasse, manager of the city’s Economic Development department, still yielding positive results despite the slowdown.

“All I know is my phone is still ringing and my e-mail is still being used a lot. There has been no slowdown in inquiries,” Lacasse said. “I’m impressed that people’s knowledge of this area is very sound. They understand it is very resource-based with energy and forestry and they understand that perhaps things have slowed down but they also see a bright future. So that’s why the inquiries are still there.”

The focus of the city’s marketing plan is to rank high on search engines especially those that will request investor information. The city uses a variety of online strategies, including ads, postcards, Facebook, and websites such as smartestplacetobe.com and its French sister vivezgrandprairie.com to market the city to people across the country.

“These are very basic websites with a few pages and those websites redirect traffic after two or three clicks within the appropriate section of our own website,” Lacasse said.

“If we have an ad in a (newspaper) for a job fair, and it says to come and have a job in Grande Prairie, we’ll get within a day 100 hits, which is very good because they’re what we call qualified hits. They actually stay on the website, they get the information and we know for a fact, that people have relocated and found jobs in Grande Prairie with these marketing initiatives.” More here.