As we study the demographic regional variations for small service businesses we see many things. Let us take a mobile auto detailing business and break down the data and look at what drives sales and growth. We must search for areas with similar demographics in any new territory whether we are putting in one unit of one single unit owner operator or many units to blanket a region. Proper data mapping helps and if done right it eliminates risks and saves lots of time, not to mention hard earned marketing dollars. We are talking about very specific demographic when we break down our needs for particular mobile business and then into a micro sector of the larger automotive aftermarket services industry such as mobile auto detailing. Let us look at a few of the data sets which are readily available and worthy of mention to our business study: Average Number Of People Per Household Average Income Number Of Cars Per Household Average Price Per Car Ethnic Make Up Number Of People In Each Five Year Age Bracket Spendable Income Average Home Price Average Education Level Number Of Recreational Vehicles Population Number Of Non-Perennial Residents Tourism Related Sales Tax Revenue Day Time Population We also should consider an over all strategy in advance of the future events; namely the expansion of the business. First we must ask ourselves the intentions regarding expansion such as: How many trucks do you eventually want to run How fast do you wish to expand Which areas of service do you feel most comfortable concentrating on Who you plan on using as your manager When do you realistically plan to have the next mobile car wash unit running By sectioning out the area into a grid and then overlaying the data, we can quickly determine the hot spots where most of the business will come from and where the most efficient use of time and schedule should be allotted to maximize profits. If you will commit yourself to methodically looking at your market you will find yourself in a better place and a much easier job serving your best possible customer base. Think about it. |
