This week was a busy one for the HALO team. After a busy first part of the week working on some great planning projects in the office, we spent three days/two nights in Jackson, Miss. attending and serving as speakers for the Mississippi Main Street Association’s quarterly Manager’s Training. Communities from across the state sent their managers, board members and promotions committee chairs to the Cabot Lodge Millsaps to learn how to make their communities shine and their downtowns more vibrant and successful through Promotions. There was a tremendous turnout, and if you missed it, shame on you.
One of the presenters was John Baltuch of MRI in Atlanta, a community Wi-Fi consultant. His financial statistics and justification for community Wi-Fi, even in the smallest towns, was truly amazing. The effects this service can have on economic development is stunning, and the return on investment from dollars staying in a community, increased earnings, business recruitment and a host of other factors quickly repays the initial investment. In addition, from where we’re sitting, community Wi-Fi offers some tremendous community and small business marketing opportunities that would be highly effective and are to date mostly lacking in most communities where we work. I am anxious to see this movement progress as both an economic development tool and an effective marketing engine for America’s communities.
Also speaking at this training were Tripp
and Ben Muldrow of Arnett Muldrow & Associates in Greenville, SC. I met Ben and their partner Aaron Arnett at the National Main Streets Conference in Seattle last March. We immediately hit it off, and so it was a real pleasure to see them again and have the opportunity to even plan projects together and present at this training together on some various marketing tactics for downtowns. Tripp and Ben are thoroughly entertaining presenters, and their case studies not only are informative and full of valuable ideas, they are visual and hold the attention of the audience terrifically. It was a lot of fun for Andy and I to present with Tripp on Friday morning to review the basics of a marketing plan and some great tactics that could be included in such a plan – like the importance of retail market studies and how to do it correctly for a downtown or business district to get valuable, usable information. We also discussed the new face of cooperative marketing campaigns (there were some stellar ideas here), customer advisory councils to create buzz, secret shopper systems, measurement methods, and some technical tricks such as gang printing to save money. You can watch for a lot more collaboration between HALO and the Arnett Muldrow in the future.
Next week, I am off to Boston, sponsored by Wentworth Institute of Technology. I will be meeting with the Boston Main Streets folks, executive directors from around Boston (where there are 19 total Main Street districts), speaking to business owners in the Mission Hill Main Streets and also to leaders at Wentworth – all about marketing both internally and externally, especially related to Gen Y. I hate to sound too excited, but when I checked the weather there, it’s undeniable. I’ll be travelling from triple digit heat wave to 70 degree highs. I’ll be blogging from Boston next week about the events of the day and the information we exchange with our new northern friends – and about the cooler temperatures.
