Okotoks can put another feather in its cap after it was ranked as the fourth most entrepreneurial small city in the country.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released its entrepreneurial city rankings, which saw Okotoks rise significantly from its 2014 ranking of 25th place.
In addition, Okotoks was rated the sixth most entrepreneurial municipality Canada-wide, including major cities.
“It’s a ranking for the entire community, based on the number of businesses per capita in town, the businesses property taxes, overall optimism in town, the number of self-employed individuals,” said Shane Olson, Okotoks economic development manager. “Essentially, it means people are enjoying doing business here.”
He said organizations in town like the Okotoks and District Chamber of Commerce and Community Futures Highwood have played major roles in helping the town to boost its rating.
The CFIB ranking follows two major awards received by the town in the past three weeks.
On Oct. 7, Okotoks was named Municipality of the Year by the Chinook Country Tourist Association, and the town won the Marketing Canada Award from the Economic Development Association of Canada (EDAC) at the beginning of October for its tourism and activities guide.
“We applied for that (municipality of the year) award, but we also received nominations from other municipalities in Alberta, which was really humbling,” said Olson.
He said the award is an overall community achievement based on the town’s festivals and events, transportation, parks and business.
“It’s a community collaborative award, and it’s nice to get recognition,” he said.
Though Okotoks was nominated for municipality of the year is 2014, this is the first time the town has received the award.
“It’s pretty significant,” said Olson. “We were able to win over Lethbridge, which means a lot.”
He said the EDAC Marketing Canada Award was also very meaningful, because the tourism and activities guide was judged by professional advertising agencies and marketing firms.
Olson said hundreds of hours are put into their tourism marketing projects, and it’s rewarding to see the effort recognized.
The guide cost $17,000 total to produce, but $10,000 of that cost was recovered through advertising, bringing the final cost to $7,000.
“It was nice to recover from of the cost to provide service to the business community by listing all the key amenities Okotoks has in one spot,” said Olson. “Of course, this included the fortune teller and the famous ‘number of things to do in Okotoks’ campaign.”
The fortune teller was originally designed for young people and was well-received, he said. The economic development team is currently looking at ways to take advantage of this success with future designs.
Olson said they are also looking at ways to build on the attention received by the viral #thingstodoinokotoks social media campaign.
The Town’s online presence got a significant boost during the week of Sept. 21 to Sept. 27, he said, with a total of 6,200 new visits to the www.okotoks.ca website and a 3,500 per cent increase in online engagement, indicating a significant rise in the number of “likes,” “shares” and comments on social media platforms.
The hashtag #thingstodoinokotoks was used 188,000 times on Twitter, and the Town received calls from national media outlets including radio and television stations, including the Eyeopener on CBC.
Olson said the number of positive and negative comments were roughly split fifty-fifty, and there were also a high number of “neutral” comments, which he said were more humourous in nature.
“We’ve all heard the line, ‘No press is bad press,’ and it’s true here,” said Olson. “We’re going to run with that and our other successes, and see where it takes us. That could lead to any number of things from t-shirts with the hashtag slogan, maybe producing more fortune tellers, and following up in Calgary with more messaging.”
