In continuing their effort to bring new economic industries to the area, the Madison County Economic Development Authority (MCEDA) has incorporated new marketing strategies to attract more businesses to the county.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the Madison County Board of Supervisors, MCEDA Executive Director, Tim Coursey said the organization has revamped their website to incorporate more data intensive information.
“It has become our number one marketing tool, and it didn’t used to be that way,” he said. “Now instead of meeting with site consultants at trade shows or in person, they now go straight to your website. If you don’t have a website with the data they are looking for you’re probably not going to even make the short list.”
Coursey said that this is actually his fourth website that he’s constructed and feels that after having tested the market and adapting to its needs, that they finally have it right. New interactive GIS maps have also been added to the website to give consultants a better idea of which locations are available to them.
“They [Central Mississippi Planning and Development District] recently produced new interactive GIS maps for us so we have new maps of all of our industrial parks and of Parkway East that are available,” he said.
MCEDA has also gained new target industries with which they have combined with regional targets to post on the new website. Coursey said combining the new targets with regional ones gives industries a better idea of why Madison County is a good location to locate.
“What those do is it gives us the ability to say, ‘These are our target industries,’ and it tells those industries why this is a good location for them (while giving) them that data,” he said.
In addition to their online marketing effort, MCEDA is also working on several new projects to bring to the area, which extend from healthcare to three new “classified” projects as well.
“We are currently working on a healthcare project, two auto suppliers, two call centers, two logistics companies, a data center, and then three confidential projects,” he said. “This is not uncommon we usually try to work two or three projects a month. We don’t always locate all of them but we are definitely in the game all of the time.
