SEOinPhiladelphia

If  your business is focusing on providing online or offline services to a group of people living in specific part of your city or neighborhood, it is crucial to understand your local customers and “tailor” your  propositions to their unique needs/expectations. In this short post I’ll show how  small businesses can conduct some very basic local market research using freely available online tools .

Let’s say you are running a local fitness club/gym and would you like to open one more studio in Philadelphia.  Some of the most important questions might be : 1) where are competing fitness clubs located in Philadelphia? 2) what are the demographics of Philadelphia major neighborhoods? 3) Are the local residents happy with their current club?  The good news is that by spending very little time and virtually no money you can get the answers to these crucial questions.

Google Maps

where are your competitors located?

Head to Google Maps and type in ‘fintess‘ (remember to set your default location as Philadelphia or type in ‘fitness loc:Philadelphia’ ).

Google Maps result for 'fitness' - as Philadelphia default location

The above  search result map gives you a quick overview of the local fitness market. Each red “dot” on the map represents fitness related business.   You get a good idea about which part of the city is most competitive, and where there are opportunities.  For instance, I’ve marked (with green lines) the south Rittenhouse and Graduate Hospital neighborhoods as locations for potential expansion opportunities. It makes sense to investigate this part of the city further and learn more about its residents.

Local Real Estate Websites

What are the demographics of your local customers?

Knowing the geographical presence of your local competitors  is undoubtedly helpful, however it is equally important to know more about residents of a particular neighborhood.   To get basic demographic information you can use local real estate websites such as PruFoxRoach for example. This popular Philadelphia real estate company lets you check any Philly neighborhood demographic information (to change address click on ‘Revise Search’ button).  Since the source  of the data is the US Census,  you could go directly to census.gov however the real estate  sites tend to be easier to navigate and present data in a more user friendly format.

Going back to our example of opening our gym, knowing the age group and income level of a neighborhood we are looking to break into, will help us with both offline and online marketing efforts. This demographic insight could be considered when designing a landing page for your local ppc adds, creating seasonal promotions or creating creative for ads in local magazines/newspapers.

Social Media

What are the expectations of your local customer base?

Sites like Yahoo! Answers or Twitter are great local market research tools. They enable you to directly ask users from specific a geographical area about their needs, expectations, preferences or feedback:

From Yahoo! Answers

A local fitness club owner could for example use Twitter or Yahoo! Answers to ask residents of Philly’s Graduate Hospital if they are happy with their current gym (if they are not happy- why), which equipment they prefer to exercise  on  or which membership rules are most annoying. On Twitter  to encourage people to participate  in your polls (you can use twtpoll.com) offer prizes or discounts for your services.

Summary

I hope that the above examples illustrate how any small business providing services or products to the local market can easily access online tools which help to make strategic decisions.  The above insights should be included in your local marketing strategy to ensure your  services and products meet customer expectations.