Bringing Your Park to Market: Marketing and Branding Strategies for STPs

The main reason why it is important to have a good communication and marketing plan is because generally there is more offer than demand. Nowadays, Science and Technology Parks (STPs) is not the unique instrument to foster innovation in our innovation system. The system has a variety of instruments that as the same as Science and Technology parks promote the innovation and business competitiveness. For this reason, now more than ever, STPs need a good communication plan and a good marketing plan to be distinguished of the rest of instruments of the innovation system. To analyze in deep the current marketing and communication plans of the science and technology parks (STPs), we have used the following methodology:\n1º) The survey design with 52 questions about six themes: marketing strategy, marketing department structure, tools, impact, target, success stories.\n2º) The survey was made with Google Drive to facilitate the answer of the STPs.\n3º) The survey was sent by e-mail with a link to an online questionnaire to our 45 operative STP located in 12 different regions: Andalucía, Aragon, Cantabria, Cataluña, Madrid, Valencia, Galicia, Islas Baleares, Islas Canarias, País Vasco, Asturias y Murcia. The analysis of the impact in different zones is important to determine the effectiveness of different communication strategies.\n4º) Survey was answered by 51% of STPs, so, we considered we had a representative sample.\n5º) To clarify the information received we elaborated graphics and then we compared the differences between strategies, structures, tools, impacts and target from the answer received to establish the main conclusions.