COACT Provides a New Approach to Economic Development for Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership

Economic development has long played an integral role in business recruitment and retention, as it’s an essential tool for showcasing what makes a community a great place to live, work, and play.

In addition, it helps draw visitors to the region and generates spending to support the local economy.

Our client, the Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership (TSEP), is a 501c3 nonprofit public-private partnership that drives and leads economic, downtown, and community development for Tiffin and Seneca County, Ohio. As they were making their way through the various phases of reopening due to the pandemic, TSEP was looking for an effective economic development strategy to position the Tiffin-Seneca community as business-friendly and resilient.

Since we began, we have largely focused on the economic development industry. That’s just one of the reasons why TSEP looked to COACT for an integrated strategy to help with their retention and expansion initiatives.

“COACT was instrumental in helping position TSEP as a visionary through excellent messaging, business development, and creative support, combined with superior relationships and experience.”
– David Zak, President & CEO, Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership

The Challenge: Finding the Time to Make Meaningful Connections

TSEP focuses on two significant initiatives: development services and retention & expansion. Their development activities encompass everything from economic and community to commercial, entrepreneurial, and urban development services. Whereas their retention & expansion services focus on companies hiring, investing, training, or looking for space. While TSEP has an impressive list of incentives and resources, they struggled to find the time to reach out to businesses in the local community and connect with them. That’s where COACT came in.

The Solution: Taking Economic Development by Storm

COACT is unique because we provide our clients with an integrated approach with an in-house business development sales team and a complete marketing department working as one. Our team worked with TSEP to determine our market approach and got busy executing company outreach to engage with Tiffin and Seneca County companies. We took careful consideration to determine the needs of each business and asked questions to understand their goals before deciding the best course of action. From there, we positioned TSEP to put together a curated incentive/action plan to assist those businesses with their development initiatives.

“COACT has economic development down to a science. They have a team of professionals who could call on behalf of TSEP, gather information, and prequalify for us. They took the time to understand what exactly we do and eventually, it got to the point where they explained what we do better than we could!”
– David Zak, President & CEO, Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership

The Results: Brand Awareness, Market Knowledge, and Retention & Expansion

When TSEP started with COACT, they wanted to increase their retention & expansion initiative from 270 to 500. Our team was able to surpass that goal by 42%, gaining TSEP a total of 711 connections.

COACT’s dedication and consistency in growing the TSEP brand and getting in front of the people who matter most was integral to our success. We implemented multiple initiatives and released several touchpoints, resulting in a record year for TSEP.

“2021 was our most successful year – all thanks to COACT. If you want to reach a lot of organizations, COACT is the way to do it. We realized very quickly that it’s impossible to hire a single person to do what they do.”
– David Zak, President & CEO, Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership

Why COACT?

At COACT, our team of inside sales and marketing professionals is dedicated to implementing strategic business growth plans for our clients. Our portfolio expands across a variety of industries and we have had quite the success in the metal fabrication industry, bringing new business to our clients and strengthening their brand image.