Welcome to the Great Plains Rural Community Marketing web site!
You will find initial research information, conducted in Nebraska from 2006 to 2008, on new resident recruitment and retention, and a current three-state integrated project on community marketing that was started in 2008 and will be completed in 2012. Both projects were funded by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Research Initiative (NRI) Rural Development grants.
The projects are closely linked together. Through a household survey and several focus groups in 2007, the researchers learned that new rural residents in Nebraska we not always finding the information they needed to make good relocation decisions. New residents were telling the team that rural communities could do a better job marketing themselves to potential new residents.
The second study is taking that insight, conducting more in-depth research and trying to work with communities to develop not only a community-led marketing process but several new tools that communities can use in developing and implementing a marketing plan.
The Community Marketing Project was developed to research 1) why people migrate to rural communities 2) how communities retain these new citizens and 3) the ways rural communities can utilize this information.
Rural Community Marketing project goals were to:
- Increase economic opportunities and an improved quality of life in rural America; and
- Enhance the ability of rural communities to attract and retain new members of the local workforce.
Research goals of the project were to discover:
- What attracted in-migrants to their current residences
- What, if any, residential recruitment efforts they responded to
- What recent in-migrants do for a living and what employable skills they possess
- What entrepreneurial interests they might possess
- How satisfied in-migrants are with their current residential situation
- How they participate in the social and cultural life of their new communities
- What disincentives there might be to continued residence
This project consists of primary research including: household surveys of new residents, labor vacancy surveys and consumer focus groups (face to face interviews with current new residents and on-line groups with potential new residents) and the development of case studies.
This research project was completed with collaboration from North Dakota State University Center for Community Vitality and South Dakota.
The researchers conducted case studies on six towns in Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota:
