Today I was working with Erik from our team with a US client on implementing a trial for our online FDI lead generation solution DealMaker. The client informed us that he was about to outsource lead qualification and processing services from an FDI professional services provider. Outsourcing parts of the sales and marketing process is a trend in FDI promotion business development. The clients problem was that he received to much online inquiries to handle and most of them where considered to unserious to spend scarce agency capacity on them.

We debated if one should pump the water out or fix the dam. In real life FDI Agency work it is not that simple nor black or white. However, we do believe that the right online economic development strategy and FDI promotion and acquisition should prevent that unrealistic or unserious opportunities filter through. We also believe that the FDI inquiry response process can be optimized such that the workload of the inquiry response is minimized without the  risk of turning down serious opportunities. Finally, no agency wants to leave a bad impression if the requestor is serious but the requested solution or services are simply not in your portfolio. For these situations a delegation or link to another platform may be an elegant exit arrangement.

I just talked to a potential client and he raised the following challenge: “I believe it may be easier/more effective to buy some keywords in Google such as “FDI” and “Europe” to increase the visibility of our website.”

That’s a very valid and important question. Would it? I am sure it could but it would cost you a fortune and huge management effort to control the Adwords budget and keyword selection and placement positioning. Not because Adwords is difficult but because FDI is VERY GENERIC. Google would love you for placing that keyword – axe your Adwords credit line and you would end up competing heavily for FDI add placemen at high cost and marginal effect. Not a good idea at all.

What would work is that we agree with you – our Investment Promotion Agency or Location Promotion Agency client – to place Adwords against your profile page on Global-Arena.com. That would bring more effect and more impact for less cost. Way less. And, not at last, we could also tell you by our extensive ongoing FDI research what keywords fit your location advantages and investor acquisition strategy and in what countries it should run. It requires a lot of FDI global market insight to do this right. And that’s the only option you have considering the drain potential of this instrument on your marketing budget. Adwords the Tyrannosaurus Rex running around in your marking budget and department. Its impressive but hungry all the time.

I could go on for another 2 pages on this great topic in more relevant detail. We should. We will dive in to it in more detail in next articles.

Cheers – time to go to bed.

We are very pleased that many FDI and real estate executives accepted our personal invitation to hear how we connect FDI with real estate projects and opportunities at Global-Arena.com
At MIPIM we will also publish the findings of our market research on global FDI networking communities and platforms.
I hope that MIPIM is an opportunity to meet face to face.
kind regards
Peter Storm

Understanding marketplace positioning is crucial; Whether referring to traditional business and marketing strategies or online strategy… Call it what you want; marketplace analysis is crucial for business strategy development and critical to business margins. Gathering FDI insight is therefore -or should be- established as an ongoing process in the Foreign Direct Investment decision making process.

Marketplace analysis and systematic development of FDI insight helps identify opportunities for growth from discovering gaps in the market that competitors aren’t exploiting. In strategic terms, marketplace analysis helps identify gaps where customer segments aren’t well served by existing propositions.

Despite all the rich data available from web analytics and media consumption, companies and their decision makers do not dispose over the necessary tools to structure all available data! It seems to me that this core part of FDI decision making is often hindered due to the fact that multi dimentional managerial input cannot be reduced to an objective one dimentional managerial output.

On Global–Arena.com we give our users acces to GlobalArenaRank, the scientific algorithm developed to identify business locations which best meet the differing requirements of parties -FDI supply and demand- involved in Foreign Direct Investment initiatives. GlobalArenaRank draws upon a large amount of data from authoritative sources and reduces it to relevant results only using statistical reduction methodology.

The GlobalArenaRank scientific algorithm calculates rankings of countries within their regions, and of locations within their countries. GlobalArenaRank also drills deeper into locally-specific rankings of locations which have upgraded their profile presentation through purchase of Global Arena’s premium FDI Marketplace services.

On our website users assign their own weightings to any combination of nine location factors – Labour Cost, Labour Productivity, Infrastructure, Education, Labour Availability, Labour Market Flexibility, Market Attractiveness, Socio-Political Stability and Cost of Living – to receive an overview report that shows rank by country and lists locations within each. From here, users can start to access deeper levels of information and perform systematic business location search and analysis.

Companies from all sizes can now conduct their own resource allocation and location longlisting processes without the need for subscription based expensive online FDI data analysis systems and or FDI services from location consultants or global consultancies. Global-Arena.com saves you time and money while providing you the best answers when you need them for your business needs.

We hope this helps your company or location compete effectively in the global economy.