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Casual Articles - Site Location - Defining Your Trade Area, Choosing the Right Location for Success
A very large percentage of businesses fail within a few years of opening. A lot of websites on the internet have been abandoned and can be considered failures. When people fail at things the first thing the look at is how hard they worked. If someone fails at something when they give maximum effort they may be puzzled as to why things did not go the way they would have liked. The thing that many people do not realize is that hard work does not always pay off, although it is still very important in business.Hard work along with luck and execution are the most important factors to running a successful business. You can work very hard but if you don’t execute correctly it does not matter. If you do not have plans and backup plan it also will not matter. As far as luck goes people are very lucky in many different ways. Maybe one business owner needs a loan to stay in business but cannot get one but he has a rich uncle he can turn to. Maybe a person gets lucky and runs into Donald Trump
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to you
There is no such thing as a “small” job. Each function within our society aids our detailed technical lifestyles and well being. From a store clerk to a business executive, each position is an intricate part of the matrix of our world. We rely on these functions without even realizing their value or contribution to our daily activity. Each person has there place and each person has their purpose. The key is discovering and taking the time to find out what exactly you are to contribute to the world.What is even more challenging is that often we are presented with serving multiple roles in our lives besides just our “purpose.” We are parents, workers, spouses, and children. All of which demand time and effort from our daily lives. What is important though is that we balance our time and our roles to nurture our purpose and inner abilities. It takes time and effort to discover your goals and ambitions, but it is a quest that need not go unnoticed.A common excuse for not nurturi
Site location is part art and part science. One needs to understand the current business landscape, the demographics of the area, the traffic patterns and as much as possible about future plans for development. And, a little bit of basic math helps, too!
Basic concept: Primary Trade Area
The primary trade area is actually exactly what one might guess it to be. It is the main area that most of your customers are coming from. Depending upon the frequency of your sales cycle and the uniqueness of your products and services in the market, you make some assumptions about how far your prospects are willing to go to get to your location.
For convenience locations such as grocery stores, gas stations, coffee shops and banks, people generally don’t travel too far (relatively speaking) from their point of origin. The opposite is true for destination locations, such as specialty restaurants, theme parks, specialty clothing stores, et al. Distance willing to travel is actually a function of availability of goods and services and population density.
Translated into practical terms, a person in an office in Manhattan is more likely to get cash from the nearest ATM (within a block or two) where as a homeowner on an Iowa farm may have to travel 10 miles to get to the closest bank branch in town.
How do you determine your Primary Trade Area?
You could take a map out of your car, stick it on the wall, and throw darts, OR, you could spend a little time with a mapping package and do some neat calculations.
If your business isn’t very dynamic, you don’t need to reassess your trade area more than once a year. If you are growing, it makes sense to make mapping out your customers relative to the prospective pool of prospects a company metric.
There are lots of advanced calculations that take into consideration the competition, traffic patterns, store attractiveness and prospect population, but if you don’t have much time or competitor data, the best way to get a handle on your customers is to plot them out on a map and see where they live. Then, depending upon whether your consider yourself to be a convenience location or a destination location, you determine where the closest 50 – 80% of your customers live (or work). Use 50% if you are more of a convenience location and go out anywhere from 65-90% to determine your primary drawing area for destination locations.
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to you
The postcards are among the most versatile print that you can have for your business promotions, advertising, greeting cards and invitations. They are versatile for they can reach out for clients of different places via mail and distributed by hands.Mainly as a valuable tool for marketing these postcards possesses vital features that advertisers must know.1.The postcards have various printing sizes that you can opt to choose for your printing jobs. Postcards are categorized depending on its sizes. Postcards are available with the standard size of 4.25” x 6”, large size of 5” x 7” and a jumbo size of 6” x 9”. Customizing your postcards you can also have club flyers and custom print them. The sizes are also available by 4” x 9”, 6” x 11”, and 5.5” x 8.5”.2.For the paper stock, high quality and bright white 14pt gloss cover stock is the one used. The paper is characterized to have smooth and superior quality that will make it perfect for your full color postcards prints
The primary trade area is actually exactly what one might guess it to be. It is the main area that most of your customers are coming from. Depending upon the frequency of your sales cycle and the uniqueness of your products and services in the market, you make some assumptions about how far your prospects are willing to go to get to your location.
For convenience locations such as grocery stores, gas stations, coffee shops and banks, people generally don’t travel too far (relatively speaking) from their point of origin. The opposite is true for destination locations, such as specialty restaurants, theme parks, specialty clothing stores, et al. Distance willing to travel is actually a function of availability of goods and services and population density.
Translated into practical terms, a person in an office in Manhattan is more likely to get cash from the nearest ATM (within a block or two) where as a homeowner on an Iowa farm may have to travel 10 miles to get to the closest bank branch in town.
How do you determine your Primary Trade Area?
You could take a map out of your car, stick it on the wall, and throw darts, OR, you could spend a little time with a mapping package and do some neat calculations.
If your business isn’t very dynamic, you don’t need to reassess your trade area more than once a year. If you are growing, it makes sense to make mapping out your customers relative to the prospective pool of prospects a company metric.
There are lots of advanced calculations that take into consideration the competition, traffic patterns, store attractiveness and prospect population, but if you don’t have much time or competitor data, the best way to get a handle on your customers is to plot them out on a map and see where they live. Then, depending upon whether your consider yourself to be a convenience location or a destination location, you determine where the closest 50 – 80% of your customers live (or work). Use 50% if you are more of a convenience location and go out anywhere from 65-90% to determine your primary drawing area for destination locations.
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to you
If you are in the credit repair business, you may have at one time or another expressed interest in purchasing credit repair leads.Credit repair leads can be provided in many different ways. Such as referrals, a toll-free number allowing for people to contact you that may need your assistance, and a web site for people to visit to familiarize themselves with your company and educate themselves about credit repair and the services you can provide them with.Along these lines of leads, you may have considered purchasing credit repair leads from an internet company.This isn’t such a bad idea if you are looking for an alternative lead source for credit repair.The benefits . . .The benefit of purchasing credit repair leads from an internet company is that the person that needs the credit repair came to a site and found an on line form to fill out specifically to acquire credit repair from a credit repair company.The customer already understands that the
Translated into practical terms, a person in an office in Manhattan is more likely to get cash from the nearest ATM (within a block or two) where as a homeowner on an Iowa farm may have to travel 10 miles to get to the closest bank branch in town.
How do you determine your Primary Trade Area?
You could take a map out of your car, stick it on the wall, and throw darts, OR, you could spend a little time with a mapping package and do some neat calculations.
If your business isn’t very dynamic, you don’t need to reassess your trade area more than once a year. If you are growing, it makes sense to make mapping out your customers relative to the prospective pool of prospects a company metric.
There are lots of advanced calculations that take into consideration the competition, traffic patterns, store attractiveness and prospect population, but if you don’t have much time or competitor data, the best way to get a handle on your customers is to plot them out on a map and see where they live. Then, depending upon whether your consider yourself to be a convenience location or a destination location, you determine where the closest 50 – 80% of your customers live (or work). Use 50% if you are more of a convenience location and go out anywhere from 65-90% to determine your primary drawing area for destination locations.
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to you
When dealing with foreign investors and franchising in another country often language and interpretation of word meanings can get clouded. Additionally tenses or gender of words can change what a sentence says or means in an agreement. In franchising Internationally this becomes a real issue because of the number of potential countries an international US Based, Australian or European Based Franchisor might franchise in.As we expanded our company into other markets we found this to be extremely problematic due to the fact that a particular country may have different dialects and issues in their own language itself, not to mention the English versions of the words and their meanings. One issue we immediately noticed when trying to deal in multiple languages is that even the topics in the table of contents were at issue. So, I addressed this issue by inserting this clause into our international contracts for franchising our business model;7.20 Headings and Table of Contents’t need to reassess your trade area more than once a year. If you are growing, it makes sense to make mapping out your customers relative to the prospective pool of prospects a company metric.
There are lots of advanced calculations that take into consideration the competition, traffic patterns, store attractiveness and prospect population, but if you don’t have much time or competitor data, the best way to get a handle on your customers is to plot them out on a map and see where they live. Then, depending upon whether your consider yourself to be a convenience location or a destination location, you determine where the closest 50 – 80% of your customers live (or work). Use 50% if you are more of a convenience location and go out anywhere from 65-90% to determine your primary drawing area for destination locations.
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to you
Losing a piece of paper can cost you piece of mind, a harmonious relationship, valuable time, an account, a promotion, or even your job! October is National Clean-Out Your Files Month -- a great time to face the facts about paper.According to research sited by Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper in The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press 2002), by the year 2005 there will be 50% more paper in offices than there was in 1995. In addition, the average person spends over 150 hours a year looking for misplaced information. It’s clear that the concept of the paperless office is a myth, not to be realized in our lifetime. But let’s face it! Check out the homes and offices all over America and it is imminently clear that using traditional filing methods, the problem of managing paper will never be solved. There simply aren’t enough human resources to make file labels and put files in alphabetical order!An international office products company did a study which rated filing a
Determine how far people will walk/drive to come to your location. “Ring studies” are called that because the mapping person puts circles around around the location and calculates the number of customers and prospects that exist within each mileage band. Another way to look at your customers is to ask for a drive time isochrone….that is, a unique polygon shape that follows the road network that shows you how many minutes most customers need to drive to get to your location. (Picture a city with 5 major roadways convening at the city center. A drive time isochrone might look like a star shape because people driving fast on the major roadways can get in faster than those in the more congested (and lower speed limit) side streets.
Convenience locations are generally 5 minutes or less in the dense suburbs, and can be up to 20 or more out in the more rural areas. There are more detailed ways to calculate trade areas – but if you’re looking for something quick that most people understand and won’t question you’ll get the basics straight so that you can say something like:
“70% of our customers come from within 7 miles of the store, that’s about a 15 minute drive time.”
Now what?
If you have one location, then when you are expanding you know that you have been successful with this particular location and can at least use your current assumptions to review the proposed site. If you have several locations, then classify your stores first by type, profitability, size, or other metrics, then lay out the distance and drive time data in a spreadsheet. You’re starting to build some intelligence!
Next step, buy data.
Census data is great, but it is dated. Populations are constantly changing in relation to the economy of an area. If you are serious about understanding and growing your business, don’t rely on free or cheap estimates. Spend a few hundred dollars and get what you need so that you can confidently approach the bank (or your spouse, boss, investor etc.) with information you can hang your hat on.
Here’s what I usually recommend for a good understanding of the potential for a site: Each report is about $50 depending on where you buy it from, and most of the time it is packaged so you can expect to pay between $250 - $500 for a series of site reports that you can use over and over to assess or market a property.
1. Census counts, current year estimates and five year projections for current population and current households. Include population described by segments such as Education, Home Value, Occupations, Race, Language spoken
2. Income distribution, net worth
3. Lifestyle/Lifestage assessment
4. Traffic counts
5. Business counts
6. Relief map (shows the terrain)
7. Market Potential Estimates
8. Consumer Expenditure, Retail Sales reports
...then analyze it!
So you have the data, now what? Analyze it. What I mean is take some time to study the reports and pull out factors that are important to your business. Make some
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