Global Direct Investment Solutions

Corporate Development for a Networked World

OnTheShortList.com      

fDi magazine links   fDi Atlas

ShortListNews.com  

Special Offer for Area Representatives

Bruce Donnelly   bruce@gdi-solutions.com    (Biography)

Contact us directly to discuss your marketing plans, and what we can do for you in 2006.  TEL 847-304-4655.  Please also respond to our Area Survey by e-mail.  See how to request a relevant directory listing

Our 2006-2010 business plan is to develop independent working relationships with networks of executives, professional advisors, and communities through a structure of regional offices for corporate relationship development and independent project referrals.  You may also find our analysis about the costs of "lead generation" work on a per job basis to be of interest, including market reach through advertising.

The gist of the plan is to develop a team of professionals who can provide well-qualified project referrals as an ongoing service for our clients.

You may find our analysis of investment project trends by state to be of interest.

How will executives and their advisors find out about the benefits of your area for their purposes, unless they are already searching for information about your specific community?  We make it much easier for them to quickly discover the benefits of your area, and we also offer very well-qualified personal referrals according to their interests.

We can help you to attract growing companies to your area.  The website complements our personal relationship development work to find and refer projects.  Instead of just being listed in a simple directory of economic development websites, the executive summary content that we share about an area by working together helps executives and their advisors to discover at a glance why your area may be relevant to their project plans, and then call you or visit your website or other resources to explore their interests..

•  Refer also to www.ontheshortlist.com as a new way to selectively highlight business locations through our field research work in 2006.
•  Try the new custom search features, such as Area Search and USA Search

•  Investment promotion for a leading regional development agency and county
•  North American sales for PricewaterhouseCoopers' global location consultants
•  Met with over 1000 executives about project plans after contact with thousands
•  Set up Deloitte & Touche consulting practice during hyperinflation in Brazil
•  US Foreign Service Officer (diplomat) and an MBA in International Business
•  Phil : B2B technology partnering events - medical devices, biotech, etc.

Market Reach - aside from our personal contact work among executives in North America and Europe, general marketing work attracts many website visitors.  After promoting this website for only two years, visits were up 150% from 200,000 in 2004 to a 500,000 per year pace in 2006.

Graphics : daily visits, monthly visits, and regional interests.

There are also some larger options, such as to visit and report on the area with one or more site selection consultants to share professional insights into the area as a business location, but most of our marketing work costs less per year than one magazine ad.

The typical cost of our proactive shared marketing service (SICR) to personally reach executives at companies of common interest is between $1000 and $10,000 per month.

We can also perform larger custom marketing services, depending on the scope of the work and the expected time and difficulty to develop well-qualified prospects for one area. 

Our ability to help executives with their interests anywhere in the world can also help to open doors to new relationships of future value, even if they aren't interested in your area for their current plans.

In other words, whenever they need help with future plans, we can readily assist them, unlike the traditional short-term telemarketing or direct mail projects which try to attract their interest at one time for one introductory meeting, but offer no other value to them.  Our ability to help them anywhere at any time can open the door to valuable relationships.

What does it really cost you to develop well-qualified prospects on an exclusive basis? 

We are confident that, by working together, we can drive down your "cost of sales" while helping executives and their advisors to quickly identify very relevant solutions for their needs.  Our goal is to reduce the cost of well-qualified "lead generation" work per new job actually created.  It takes time and resources to attract and win new projects, but this business was designed from the start to be a very cost-efficient source of good prospects.

We are not publishers selling advertising space or directory listings, or distributing poorly qualified "leads" from any reader enquiry to every current advertiser which might be potentially relevant.  That is not our business model.

We selectively publish useful GUIDE executive summary content about areas in a way designed for quick reference through new search technology.  This helps the users of our services to find what they are seeking, with or without our direct help, and supports the effectiveness of our personal referral work and development of corporate relationships.

If you want to add a button or banner link to our website, you can find the images through the above.  Contact us if a custom "landing page" or "deep links" may be appropriate to highlight the content most likely to be of interest to your contacts.

For example, if you participate in our GUIDE Area Profile service, that can serve as a landing page about your area, with easy links to other resources of potential interest to your visitors.

Many have thanked us for making it so easy to quickly find the information and contacts they need, anywhere in the world.  That builds executive relationships and referral networks.

With your participation, we can grow even more efficient networks of relationships as a source of well-qualified referrals which can complement your own direct promotional efforts.

It's not just a directory of websites

How can you efficiently attract the interest of executives who may not yet recognize your area's relevance and capabilities to meet their needs as they grow in a new location?

If they already knew your area was of interest,  they could already find you as shown by a quick search.  Our work helps executives to recognize when an area is potentially relevant to their interests even though they may have overlooked it as an option otherwise.

Instead of screening out areas, we make it easier to discover potentially relevant ones.

Try the Google site search feature or Contacts button available on every page of this website (upper right), or the Invest USA and other directories by global regions, states, and professional specialties.  If your organization isn't already listed, please let us know.

Then, try searching for any area we have highlighted through an Area Profile, Survey, Ad Recall, and other more detailed content, such as Fayetteville.  If you search for any of the content of these executive summary presentations, you should find them very easily.

In other words, all the content becomes an easy search path to find relevant locations - without even looking at the relevant directories in which they are also highlighted.

Unlike a general web search, this makes it easy for executives and their advisors to find out about the benefits of places which may be unfamiliar, or for which they had not been seeking information directly.  After all, if they were already looking directly for your organization, they don't need our directories at all.  The directories are convenient mainly for quick reference, whether already searching for one organization or other relevant ones.

For example, they may be looking for site selection consultants, but can also find you.

By sharing better knowledge of your capabilities through this site, it will be even faster and easier for executives and their professional advisors to find you through this niche market channel whenever your services may be relevant to their plans.

We offer three economical ways - as summarized belowt - for economic development professionals to test the value of our work as a source of very well-qualified and relevant referrals as executives and their advisors research potential business locations.

There are larger things we can do to proactively support investment promotion interests, but these demonstrate the response-oriented side of our work through website content.

•  Host a Professional Site Selection Tour familiarization visit with one or more site selection consultants and share their perceptions of the area through a GUIDE Area Report on this website and the selective www.OnTheShortList.com website
•  Highlight your area through a GUIDE Area Profile, which can be found by visitors (and search engines) in many ways, including related GUIDE content on topics of frequent interest to investors
  • We also include a GUIDE Biographic Profile for the key point of contact, which highlights professional experience and facilitates introductions
  • We can highlight such things as :
    • listings of available sites and buildings
    • recent investment announcements in the area
    • testimonials from existing investors
    • available reports (labor market analysis, cost analysis, etc.)
    • tax and incentives considerations
    • professional service providers with experience in the area
    • who to contact for various interests
  • Area Profiles are highlighted at the top of both our regional and state directories. 

•  Publish a GUIDE Area Survey as an executive summary of your area
  • Download a PDF copy of the Survey to reply by e-mail
  • The Survey succinctly introduces an area, as during "long list" selection
  • The Area Profile has links to more details, such as for "short list" issues
    • Both are designed for search engines to easily find such content
    • Both provide contact details for quick response to any interest

Some of our economic development contacts have requested website statistics since they may receive some data from publishers as they promote advertising sales (not our business model).

•  320,000+ visits in 2005 - up 60% from 201,982 in 2004
•  In 2006 we expect over 400,000 visits - more than some leading magazines.
•  The current pace is 500,000 /year.  See the daily website visit statistics.
•  Thousands of visits per month are driven by Google and other search engines
•  We can provide many relevant search paths to find out about your area.

Note that we contact executives personally about their interests.

We don't just wait for them to find our website and contact us, or use the website to find what they want.  Our response-oriented website work complements our proactive marketing work.  Referring well-qualified projects to relevant contacts is the main focus of our work.

As the website statistics reflect, our website was designed with search engine optimization in mind so that it would be very easy for users to go directly to relevant directories, Area or Service Profiles, Surveys, and other content that would help them with their project plans.  The website is basically a "response oriented" distribution channel, but we also offer proactive marketing services to research and reach targeted companies.

Given the statistics at left, there typically may be 1000 visits per month or more to very relevant pages where your area is highlighted so that users can quickly and easily learn about the benefits of your area and contact you directly or link to your website.  They don't need to ask us for help, but we also make it very easy to do so, and can therefore also offer suggestions personally even if their initial enquiry was not about your area.

Over a year, that amounts to 12,000 visits by users who have clearly shown interest in the specific pages where you are highlighted (as opposed to just general visits to the website).  Not every visitor to our website will be interested in your region or area at the time, as the distribution analysis of their regional interests demonstrates.

In other words, the approximately 500,000 website visitors we now attract per year are less important than the fact that the pages which are most relevant to your own interests may reach thousands of visitors who could be very serious prospects for your purposes.

We think you will agree that it doesn't take many well-qualified prospects per year to justify the small investment in participation in these GUIDE services to highlight your area.  We highlight participating areas in a variety of ways so that it is easy to find them when relevant to a search.

$_____ base fee for the initial work to become familiar with your area and objectives

$_____ per lead which is agreed to be worth follow-up (specific interest in the area)

$_____ per well-qualified referral to a prospect (worth visiting soon, active interests)

$_____ bonus per inward visit (they visit your area to consider it within 12 months)

$_____ bonus per announced project or new job which results within 24 months

We will consider any motivating combination of the above, or other serious proposals.

We have obviously invested a lot of professional time and money to create this service, and rely on the fees we earn by introducing executives to relevant professionals.  As more areas and service providers invest in our services, we will grow our team of professionals as outlined in our 2006-2010 business plan as we develop a unique global structure of regional offices for corporate relationship development and independent project referrals.

InterTech Global Alliance > details

Call or e-mail Phil Eadon to discuss future InterTech event plans or sponsorships, including the hosting of such events in your own area.

Partners4Technology

The International Business Introduction Service

Enquiries from potential sponsors of such future events are welcome, including venues in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.  There are some very economical ways to participate.

Rather than create and promote new  events, our focus is to complement existing events by adding a B2B introduction service to schedule relevant meetings in advance of the event.  This provides more productive networking for event participants.