North Carolina’s Southeast has recently solidified its latest marketing initiative for the Wilmington region.

The strategic marketing plan is set to take economic development efforts for a four-county region through at least 2020, said Steve Yost, president of North Carolina’s Southeast, an economic development group focused on an 18-county region and headquartered in Elizabethtown.

An update from its Wilmington-micro region strategic marketing plan developed in 2015, the new plan now includes Columbus County within its scope. The last plan focused on the tri-county area of New Hanover, Pender and Brunswick.

“This is an updated plan that we’ll keep current,” Yost said. “The whole thing is really built on doing some target[ed] economic development marketing, based on regional assets. And so our goal is to market the region to decision makers with companies, or to site selection consultants, or to national industrial brokers, who are going to be working with companies to look at different areas for new facility locations.”

It took the input of several organizations over the past six months to put the strategic marketing plan together, he said.

The core partners driving this plan, with North Carolina’s Southeast as the lead, are economic development organizations Wilmington Business Development (New Hanover and Pender counties), Brunswick Business & Industry Development (Brunswick BID, Brunswick County) and Columbus County Economic Development Commission.

Other entities included in the process were N.C. Ports, Duke Energy and the N.C. Biotechnology Center. North Carolina’s Southeast also plans to connect with other regional assets for this plan going forward, such as the Wilmington International Airport, he said.

The plan, however, is not meant to take away from the marketing efforts of the individual organizations, only to enhance it, Yost said.

“The initiative is intended to help provide additional marketing of each individual county … by working together, by combining and leveraging some resources,” Yost said. “It will help generate some additional opportunities for each of the counties. It will not impede or hold back other marketing that they may be doing at all.”

With the addition of another county within the mix in this new plan, effective this year, other updates include more targeted efforts on certain industrial sectors. 

“We put a lot of thought into it … and that’s reflected in a very defined focus on business and industry sectors that we’re targeting,” Yost said.

The targeted businesses in the new plan are value-added food and beverage production; aviation and aerospace, including aircraft assembly and maintenance, and aerospace parts manufacturing; precision manufacturing and metal fabrication technology; logistics and distribution; life sciences/biotechnology, including clinical research and industrial biotechnology; and financial back office industry.

“Those (targeted sectors) are the ones that we feel like that have – based on good analysis, based on experience – that we think give us the best opportunity for a good fit in the micro-region,” Yost said. “And we have the type of workforce that could provide employment for those types of companies.”

One of the sectors that have moved up on the list in terms of its importance, because of the area’s assets, is the logistics and distribution sectors, Yost said.

Last year, the marketing strategy helped secure two new business announcements in that sector in Pender County, Yost said. It helped reel in Fine Fixtures Inc., a New York-based bathroom furnishings supplier, which was announced in December, and New Jersey-based BlueArrow Warehousing & Logistics LLC, announced last summer, he said.

Another sector that will have more emphasis through this plan is the biotechnology and clinical research sectors, as well as financial back office sectors, he added.

The model for the region includes developing the marketing initiative around several of the area's resources and assets, including the Port of Wilmington. 

An area of marketing focus is on the "At-Port Model" for economic development, which includes working with companies that need to be close to the port, with a focus on shovel-ready sites within a certain radius of the port.

“For the last several years, at least for North Carolina’s Southeast, of the prospective companies that we have talked to close to 50 percent of them had a port requirement of some type,” Yost said.

That is either through importing or exporting, he added.

This was a strategy in the 2015 plan, he said, adding that the port is one of the most important assets for this whole marketing initiative, particularly in targeting logistics and distribution, as well as anything related to manufacturing.

This model, within the North Carolina's Southeast micro-region plan, continues to be shaped as N.C. Ports modernizes and develops and improves its ability to handle larger container ships.

It gives economic developers more opportunity to continue to develop its prospects, especially with companies that wish to be within about a 20-mile radius of the port, he said.

Other targeted efforts of the plan include hosting a regional tour with site selection consultants, conducting email marketing campaigns and working with local organizations for periodic performance reports.

All the economic development agencies will take part in this collaborative initiative, Yost said, and will put some type of resources into it to execute the strategies developed within the plan. 

“This is grounded in a long track record of these counties and organizations working together. I would say the micro-region initiative has formalized that a little more than it used to be. But it is based on a history of these organizations and counties working together to some degree on economic development marketing," Yost said.

It's all about getting to the decision makers who have the potential to bring industry and jobs to the area, he said.

"This whole thing is predicated on building regional assets. And this is all focused on marketing," Yost said. "It's not brand or image marketing for the region. It's all about economic development marketing."