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Norfolk County’s economic development team is producing more data-informed content than they could before – stories, profiles, reports, and website tools – while responding to council and investor questions faster and with less manual effort.
For a small team expected to be credible, current, and responsive across all of it, having content that’s already sourced and structured before the work starts changes what’s possible.
The challenge
In 2025, the norfolkbusiness.ca website received a Bronze Award for Excellence in EconomicDevelopment from the International Economic Development Council – recognition for its effectiveness as an investment attraction and community engagement tool. The Localintel data tools embedded in the Norfolk Advantages section are part of what makes it work for site selectors and investors.
But maintaining a high-performing web presence is only one part of the job. The team is small, requests from council, investors, partners, and local businesses arrive frequently and on short timelines, and producing data-backed content the traditional way – navigating Statistics Canada, sourcing and interpreting figures, building something presentable – crowded out other work.
“I haven’t even posted too many stories or news articles on the website with datapoints because I just don’t even have the time to collect them.” Blaire Sylvester, Business Development Coordinator, Norfolk County
What Norfolk does with Localintel
Keeping investors and site selectors onthe website
The Norfolk Advantages page – the team’s primary investment attraction destination – uses interactive data visualizations, called widgets, that are available on the Localintel content platform to give site selectors and investors current information on the community’s market demographics, economic profile, and workforce characteristics. These widgets draw from verified government sources and curated third-party datasets and update automatically as new data releases.The team built the page and embeds the widgets. Localintel keeps the data in the widgets current.
Publishing data-backed stories
With access tot he platform’s content library, the team has ready-to-use stories, charts, and reports they can select, edit, and publish directly. Blaire used a platform story and chart to create a news article for the website – content she acknowledged she couldn’t have produced under typical time constraints.
“Going forward, this will be able to allow us to post more content about the county itself… which would be really positive.” Blaire Sylvester,Business Development Coordinator, Norfolk County
Responding to questions the same day
When council or an investor asks a question, the platform can often supply a credible, structured starting point immediately. Director of Economic Development John Regan described using a relevant platform story to respond to a real question with minimal editing:
“Essentially I copy and pasted, did very minor edits to it… and sent it off. And I couldn’t do that before.” John Regan, Director of Economic Development, Norfolk County
For a small team, that matters. Fewer urgent questions force staff to stop and assemble responses from scratch, and more answers are grounded in the same sourced, consistently updated data.
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John describes the experience as “literally like having an economic development analyst on staff – a virtual one.” Economic Development Coordinator Lindsay Kalliokoski framed it as an “enhanced portfolio” – one that presents facts and data in away that’s accessible to more audiences without sacrificing credibility.
Getting started
For economic development teams doing high-quality work with limited capacity, the Localintel platform provides a starting point that’s already sourced, structured, and defensible so staff can focus on applying their local knowledge rather than assembling the underlying content.
To see how Localintel works for your community, book a time with our team.
Book a demo: www.localintel.com/demo
