We all know what rural towns need, right? They need jobs, and to recruit some manufacturing, and they have a huge poverty problem. Right? Well, no. At least that's not what rural people told me.
Earlier this year, I ran a survey of subscribers and visitors to SmallBizSurvival.com. Over 200 people who identified themselves as rural shared with me what challenges their small towns were facing that they wanted help with and what challenges their rural businesses were facing.
The challenges they picked were not the usual suspects.
When describing their community's challenges, people selected a set of inter-related challenges, of bringing life and activity to their towns, so their businesses will prosper and young people will choose to stay and other people will want to visit. That's a much more nuanced view of community development than we usually give rural people credit for understanding.
Most of the people surveyed also owned businesses. Adapting to being open later hours was their most-selected challenge. Marketing was the second most-commonly-chosen challenge. And in the open-ended answers, marketing got mentioned over and over. Clearly, getting the word out about your business is still a big issue, even in small towns.
There were a few surprises. Not many mentions of jobs or poverty, which are the stereotype of rural challenges. Very few people mentioned a business gap in their community. We hear a lot about filling gaps, so that surprised me. More business people cited a lack of usable buildings in their town than a lack of a business loan, which runs contrary to the usual stories.
I was struck by how often the lack of cooperation came up. We just don't work together very well, from town leaders to local businesses. That's something we can all work on.
Business issues seemed to fall into the pattern of the
The 7 Most Common Weaknesses of Local Shops, and that's something else we can work on.
And of course we can work on bringing more life and activity to town.
If you're ready to work on those three things (cooperation, business weaknesses and more activity), then I have a guide for you. It's a few pages of Action Steps specifically inspired by these survey results. Since you're a subscriber, you get a copy right here:
If you want to share this survey or the Action Steps with others, please send them to the
Survey of Rural Challenges 2015 page, or this address:
- smallbizsurvival.com/ruralchallenge
At that page, you'll find all the survey goodies:
- A summary of survey results
- A detailed report of the survey questions and answers
- A chance to signup to get the Action Steps (only for subscribers)
If you're interested in an article about the survey results for your publication, or to have me come to your town, just hit reply and tell me about it. That is the quickest way to reach me.
Keep shaping the future of your town,
Becky
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