Are You Tuned In to Your Marketing Area?

Most small business owners dont have a research person on staff, who can tell them about changes in their marketing areas. Some small businesses dont even know what their marketing area is Rebecca Lambert, Adelante Media Group.

Most small to medium- sized businesses know that the area within a 10 mile radius around their business is considered to be their marketing area. This means that most of their business will come from people living and working within a 10 mile radius of their business. But who are the people in your radius?

The 2010 census brought with it staggering growth in ethnic populations, but it also brought with it more advanced technology to enable us to decipher that data better than we ever have. We no longer need to have a data specialist at work, or wait for newspapers or other organizations to decipher the data and write an article for us to understand the way we think about our business and the area it is located in has evolved.

The newest technology that the census has given us is a census tract map. This map allows us to look at our business from a street level, and see how our neighborhoods and our potential customers have changed, so that we can adapt our business practices to meet those changes.

For example, go to Google maps and pull up all of the locations for your business, and then enter your address into the census tract map, to see at a street level, what is the mix of the your marketing area. Is it mostly Anglo? Asian? Hispanic? How has it changed since the last census, and how does this change your planning for your businesses future?

Lets take the 7-11 Convenience Store located at 10812 Bridgeport Way Southwest in Lakewood, WA 98499. If you copy that address from Google maps, and then enter it into the search bar of the Census Tract Map. You can then can mouse over the map, and it shows the census tract numbers, and the populations within them. The census tract numbers for this particular location are: 72107,72108,71902,71901,71805,71807,72901,71706,71704. Look at each individual tract number and see what majority demographic in your neighborhood is. In this case, look at tract 71807 which shows that the Hispanic population of this neighborhood and the majority of its business area have a Hispanic density of 26%, the lowest tract shows a 5% population of Hispanics. The majority of the business area however, has high Hispanic Density, and shows negative growth for the Anglo and other Ethnic demos.

Business area around the Bridgeport 7-11

Marketing Areas Continued.

You can see that the White population has dropped by 26%, the Black population has also dropped by 12 percent, and the Asian population by 7%. As a matter of fact, every population except Multi-racial, and Hispanic has lost population, while the Hispanic population actually grew by triple digits.

If you were a small business, which depended on your local business area to support you, what types of changes might you make to your business to reflect the new reality of your Marketing Area?

1. Make sure you have signage and product that is inviting to the demographic you are serving. This doesnt mean that you need to change everything over to Spanish; it just means that you need to make sure that you have an inviting presentation of your business to this demographic.
2. Make sure that your business is sensitive to the new diversity of the neighborhood and its needs. In order for your business to thrive, your business area needs to meet the specific needs of the demographic. This particular 7-11 might benefit from adding products from a Mexican foods distributor, and may add products, such as phone cards, and pre-paid cellular that people in the neighborhood are more likely to use.
3. When doing marketing, remember who your customer is. If the majority of your business area is Hispanic, offering a rebate, or special offer that cant easily be used by the majority in your business area may not be the way to go. For instance, if your business is in a high density Hispanic business area, and you traditionally have done most of your marketing by direct mail, in English, you might consider doing another piece in Spanish, or include Spanish language on your current piece. Remember, you dont have to speak Spanish (unless you have a high-end product like real estate or cars), to do business, but you do have to put the invitation out there. Doing it in the language of your neighborhood can benefit your business in the long run. If your business uses radio, or TV as a medium, you might want to consider using specific Spanish Media. You can put Spanglish in your regular media, but it distracts your old customers from your message, and probably doesnt resonate as well with your new customer.

By 2047 it is expected that minorities will be the majority in this country, but if you break it down by your Marketing area, you may find that you are already living this business reality.

Rebecca Lambert has working in Spanish Broadcasting for ten years, seven of them with the largest Spanish Broadcast Company in the Northwest, Adelante Media Group. She is also the founder of WAHMA, Washington Hispanic Media Association.

For more information on Diversity Marketing, or to look up your business area using the Census tract map, please visit www.adelantemediasea.com and click research.