By Blake Driver, Reporter at Albuquerque Business First:

The Albuquerque metro area wants to promote itself to outside companies as a whole region, not just a city.

The Metro New Mexico Development Alliance, an economic development organization representing several regions within the Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area, is getting ready to launch a cooperative digital marketing campaign and go live with an updated site selection Web portal. It will be branded as Ingenuity Central, in an effort to help promote areas that are sometimes overlooked when outside companies are considering the city as a place to relocate.

Tiffany Avery, director of communications and marketing for Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA) who was recently named president of the metro alliance, said the nonprofit will spend about $1,000 per month of its roughly $16,000 annual budget for targeted, measurable and interactive ads. Those ads through online display channels will promote the whole metro area to manufacturing, back office and aviation and aerospace companies, mostly in central and northern California at first, as an inviting place to do business. The alliance has hired local ad agency AdHouse Advertising to handle the campaign.

Efforts like co-op marketing are precisely what the alliance was formed for about 10 years ago, said Avery. It picks up the promotion tab where its six member organizations’ budgets fall short. The economic development organizations currently paying dues to Metro New Mexico, which fund its whole budget, include Sandoval Economic Alliance, Mid-Region Council of Governments, Albuquerque Economic Development, Village of Los Lunas, Estancia Valley Economic Development Association and the Greater Belen Economic Development Corp.

“So we can court bigger companies that we might not be able to attract normally,” Avery said. Click here to read the full article.