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The city of Goddard could spend as much as $150,000 next year to do what it refers to as a better job of telling the city’s story as a growing community and regional tourism destination. City leaders said they feel this is critical because west Wichita development is getting closer and closer to Goddard’s boundaries.
“Goddard is growing quickly, has several significant regional attractions and is making major investments in parks, trails, recreation and community amenities,” Goddard City Manager Craig Crossette told The Eagle via email on July 21. “However, those individual successes are not currently connected by a consistent story or an easily identifiable destination presence.”
The City Council included the branding campaign as part of its capital improvement plan at its July 20 meeting. But a final vote on Goddard’s 2027 budget is currently scheduled for Sept. 8.
Currently, the only money Goddard has for promotional purposes comes from its Tourism and Promotion Fund. It is scheduled to have $60,000 in 2027, mostly from the city’s transient guest tax revenue.
What Goddard currently doesn’t have is any money to create a dedicated, comprehensive destination-brand strategy or a city-owned tourism website specifically designed to maximize visitors’ time in Goddard.
If this new money is included in the final version of the city’s 2027 budget, Crossette said the city would like to accomplish the following:
- Increase community and stakeholder engagement;
- Create an assessment of Goddard’s attractions and position them regionally;
- Identify potential visitor groups and their motivations for coming to Goddard;
- Create a destination positioning and messaging strategy;
- Create a tourism-focused visual identity and standards guide;
- Create a dedicated tourism website, complete with search engine optimized content and analytics;
- Training for city staff and community partners so the new website and new brand can be used consistently.
The City Council has talked about aligning what it calls the “foundational portions of the branding effort” to begin as the city’s comprehensive plan update nears its final stages in mid-2027. If that is the plan that’s followed, a rollout for the new branding effort would happen sometime in early 2028, Crossette said.
There doesn’t appear to be any ready research indicating how many Kansas cities are spending how much money in their efforts to better communicate with their citizenry or potential visitors. But Nathan Eberline, executive director of the League of Kansas Municipalities, said he knows it is something more and more towns are focused on.
“As I went around the state this spring I would say cities of all sizes are having an increased concern about how to communicate with the citizenry,” Eberline said in a phone interview with The Eagle. “In some ways, this wouldn’t surprise me if we see more cities trying to figure out ways to do this.”
Ashley Bowen Cook, owner and CEO of Wichita-based Alpha Charlie Marketing, said in a July 20 email to The Eagle that city budgets can vary widely for this kind of work, with things such as logo development and brand standards starting around $30,000.
“The goal of branding is to create a cohesive narrative about what makes that city distinct and why people should choose to live, work and invest there,” Cook said.
But Goddard’s goals appear to be more ambitious.
At the present time, Goddard’s marketing and communication efforts focus on use of its Facebook page, the monthly Goddard Glance newsletter and website. Goddard also has a TikTok page with a growing audience, Crossette said. Goddard has an account on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and LinkedIn, but those platforms don’t appear to be getting any activity at the present.
“We have not used every social media platform consistently,” Crossette said. “And our tourism information is spread among several different organizations and websites. That fragmentation is one of the issues this initiative is intended to address.”
