Rising Water Raises All Ships in the Harbor

Drive through rural America today and the math tells a sobering story. More than two-thirds of all non-metropolitan counties lost population between 2010 and 2020 — the first decade-long rural population decline ever recorded in U.S. history, according to research from the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School. The industries that once anchored these communities — manufacturing, agriculture, energy production — have contracted or automated. Young people leave for cities where the jobs are plentiful, and the earnings premium is real. What remains is a shrinking tax base, aging infrastructure, and the gnawing sense that help from the outside is not coming.

This is the reality facing small communities across the country, and it is why the go-it-alone approach to economic revival is almost certain to fail. Funds are scarce. Marketing expertise is hard to find and harder to afford. The volunteer energy needed to sustain a transformation effort is finite. At worst, communities simply give up. At best, they settle for marginal, muted progress — and quietly watch more dollars drain away to larger neighbors.

But there is a better way, and it begins with a simple observation: most small communities are not alone on the map. They sit within a cluster of similarly sized towns spread across a county, or several counties, that share geography, heritage, and the same fundamental challenge. For decades, many of these communities have competed against one another for the same thin slice of tourist and outside dollars. That competition, however understandable, is self-defeating. The real competition is not the town twenty miles down the road — it is the well-financed urban destination two hours away.

Consider the logic that drives corporate retail site selection. Burger King builds next to McDonald's. CVS opens across the street from Walgreens. These are not mistakes. They are deliberate strategies rooted in a simple truth: competing brands clustered together generate more total traffic than either could attract on its own. Where there are bodies, there is business, and some of that business flows to everyone in the vicinity. Small-town leaders should apply the same thinking to their regional geography.

This is the foundation of destination marketing, regional branding, and cooperative marketing — terms that describe a powerful but underutilized strategy for smaller communities. When towns in a single county, or several adjacent counties, pool their resources and market themselves as a unified regional experience, they can punch far above their individual weight. Research bears this out. A study of collaborative tourism marketing efforts found that coordinated regional programs produced wider market reach, meaningful cost efficiencies, and measurable regional economic contributions that no single community could have achieved independently. In one well-documented case, Norfolk and Virginia Beach — normally fierce competitors — ran a joint campaign during the pandemic called "Together at Last" that generated $6 million in hotel sales. The lesson scales down as surely as it scales up.

Larger markets understand all of this instinctively. They have well-funded Chambers of Commerce, full-time economic development staffs, glossy print and digital publications, professionally managed databases, and the human capital to execute sustained marketing campaigns. They attract media coverage, corporate investment, and talented workers. Smaller communities, meanwhile, compete in their shadow — and the gap is widening. The question is not whether the playing field is fair. It is not. The question is what smaller communities intend to do about it.

Here is what that looks like in practice. Neighboring communities can combine resources to produce a regional print and digital magazine — and yes, print still matters, reaching audiences that digital-only strategies miss — that promotes the entire area and is distributed throughout surrounding markets. A shared publication broadens the advertiser base for every participating community and makes professional production financially viable where it otherwise would not be. That same collaboration can anchor a regional database of visitors and potential customers that every local business can access and use.

Regional trail initiatives — culinary routes, heritage tours, outdoor recreation corridors, arts venues — give visitors compelling reasons to move across the entire area rather than stopping at a single destination. Research from the University of Minnesota Tourism Center has found that festivals and events can generate up to seven times their cost in local economic impact when properly integrated into a regional strategy. These are not exotic concepts. They are practical tools that larger markets use every day and that smaller communities can deploy just as effectively when they stop competing and start competing together.

The digital toolkit available to communities today makes this more achievable than ever. Email marketing platforms, social media management tools, texting databases, and regional websites can be built and maintained at a fraction of what they cost a decade ago. A consortium of small towns that coordinates its digital presence can reach a regional audience with the same professionalism as a major destination, provided the effort is strategic and consistent. Studies on small-town marketing indicate that coordinated programs involving a broad base of local businesses show dramatically greater economic impact than fragmented, go-it-alone efforts.

None of this requires waiting for rescue from the outside. Federal and state governments face their own fiscal pressures, and the track record of top-down solutions for rural communities is not encouraging. Rural America is home to roughly 60 million people — about 18 percent of the national population spread across 72 percent of its land area — yet it consistently receives less policy attention and investment than its numbers and economic contribution would warrant. Larger nearby cities have little incentive to invest in the communities at their fringes. That reality will not change soon.

What can change is the relationship between neighboring small communities. When those towns marshal their combined energy, identity, and resources into a coherent regional strategy, they can expand the flow of tourism and outside dollars into the entire area. The individual community retains its own identity and character — that authenticity is, in fact, one of the most powerful marketing assets a small town possesses in a world where travelers increasingly crave experiences that feel genuine rather than manufactured. But it markets that identity as part of something larger, something worth the drive.

Small communities across this country have survived hard times before, and the ones that will thrive in the years ahead will not be the ones that waited for someone else to act. They will be the ones that looked to their neighbors, found common cause, and decided together to raise the water for every ship in the harbor.

John Newby, Pineville, MO., is a nationally recognized publisher, community, business and media consultant, and speaker. He authors "Building Main Street, not Wall Street," a column appearing in more than 50 communities nationwide. He is the founder of Truly-Local, dedicated to helping communities create excitement, energy, and synergy with local media to become more vibrant and competitive. He can be reached at info@Truly-Localllc.com.