Tantalize that prospect

What’s most important thing to me is to have a source that's completely up to date all the time. We can then go in and get a link to a map or extract a PDF of the relevant data and stick it in a presentation; prospects or clients can then reference back to our website to generate or analyze their own data if they want to explore more. We like to tantalize that prospect to come to us so that then we can work with them. 

We offer a confidential information point for an expanding business so while if you're working with a city, they may not want to sign a nondisclosure agreement, whereas we can do that. The prospect is central to us and we work for them. In so doing, we're a confidential resource and a centralized information point for them; GIS Planning provides that interactive data for me so I don't have to spend a lot of staff time and effort in collecting all this information and putting it together. 

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Use the data tools on social media to drive people back to your website

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Everyone has to have a website but one of the reasons we're working with GIS Planning on a data microsite is that I feel LinkedIn and Instagram are more attuned to grabbing people's attention than a website alone. The idea of trying to push your website out as an Information Center is sort of old fashioned. You need something else that's out there on a constant basis. You're throwing out information on social media or making comments on other people’s posts so that you become part of the conversation. And then when they say, “Gee, that that looks interesting”, they'll go to the website and they'll use your tools or they'll contact us. Internally, we'll use GIS Planning tools to generate data that goes into our proposal to them. So it's a different kind of thought process than others who see their website as the big promotional tool it might have been 10 years ago but not today. 

We try to work the other way by using the tools in the site in our proposals and then attract them back into the website. When we post from our data tools on LinkedIn or Instagram, we’re saying, “Come look at us.” 

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GIS Planning team is very responsive

The wonderful thing about working with GIS Planning is that I can ask them about some kind of new way of doing things and they'll consider it and in many cases will actually modify our site to make it happen. That's exceptional. The GIS Planning team are very responsive and they work very well with others in my staff.

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