How Our Region Competes Globally

Last month if you read my blog (I hope you did!), you learned about our business, retention, and expansion program. The other side of our operations focuses on new business recruitment. Bringing new jobs and investment to a community is the equivalent to reeling in the big fish. Groundbreaking ceremonies, celebrations, and above-the-fold headlines are usually involved. It is exciting when new companies come to a community – this is why we do what we do, but what most don’t see is the hard work and lengthy timeline that leads up to the big announcement. 

For starters, there is a lot of competition, as of 2019 there are 19,502 incorporated cities, towns, and/or villages in the U.S. That is almost 20,000 communities telling their story of why they are the best location for new business. So, we work on ways to stand out. Our first step is to develop a recruitment strategy. Obviously, every business would not be successful in our community, so our job is to identify what industries would be successful from a perspective of resources, workforce, and industry support. We identified these sectors in 2017 as metals manufacturing, wireless communication systems, business and financial services, nuclear technology, and food and beverage manufacturing. 

The Alliance uses a variety of marketing avenues from publications, to digital targeting, to industry-specific tradeshows. Creating professional relationships with site selection consultants that are tasked with helping companies find new locations and C-suite executives responsible for corporate real estate continues to be a core strategy of the Alliance, after all, everyone likes to do business with people they know. These professionals specialize in finding the ideal location for growing businesses and we want them to have the Lynchburg region in the top of their mind at all times so we find creative ways to connect through events, promotions, and one-on-one connections.  

One of the most important tools a community can have is a great economic development website. Many times, our community is being considered (or eliminated) before we are aware through our website. We keep this site up to date with the latest data, drone videos of our industrial properties, corporate leader videos, and available real estate. We also house important documents like our comprehensive economic development strategy and target industry profiles on the site. And I am happy to tell you, our economic development website YesLynchburgRegion.org is currently getting a new look and interactive data tools and will be available before the end of 2020.  

Economic development is one of the things that doesn’t “just happen.” It is a profession and process that requires consistent care and feeding if we are to attract new jobs and new capital investment to the Lynchburg region. As the region’s economic development leader, we are always focused on competing globally, thinking regionally, impacting locally.  

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The Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance’s economic development efforts are supported by the counties of Amherst, Bedford, and Campbell; the towns of Altavista, Amherst, and Appomattox; and the City of Lynchburg, as well as 65 private sector business investors.