How to Use the Census to Gain a Marketing Edge

The US census comes out once every 10 years. We have a 6 1/2 year wait until the next update, but the 2010 census is still pretty relevant as of today. If you don’t know, the US census is basically a questionnaire that households are suppose to fill out. The results are used to study and find trends, but more importantly, they are used to determine how to distribute government funds. I am getting off topic already so I will get to the point. There is a wealth on information that comes from the census which we should be able to use to help our marketing campaigns. That is what we will talk about in this article today.

The main strategical advantage that using census data provides is with local marketing. Google places, local online marketing, reputation management and so forth. If you are involved in any type of local marketing, you are going to want to pay attention to the information that is gathered once every decade about your area.

So what can you do with that information locally?

For one, you can find the most ideal places to focus your marketing campaigns on. I will give you a few examples right now. If you are in the baby products niche, find an area with a lot of kids or middle ages mothers. They are the most likely to make a purchase for their child so that is the area where you will want to focus your attention on. Remember the Google Places strategy we talked about? We told you how to get a prime location for your Google Places listings and finding an area where there is a large concentration of your target audience is a great place to consider. I will give you another example in case the baby niche didn’t appeal to you. Another good niche to track the local demographics is in music. If you happen to be in the business of online promotion, find the areas that college aged people live. Those are great places to meet people that may be interested in your niche.

Another thing you can find out is the population densities of particular areas. This is good if you are in to offline marketing. If you are thinking about handing out flyers ro placing ads, the census is a great way to figure out which location will give you the most eyes on them. Some areas have more people packed closer together and that is where you want your advertisements to be.

Let’s do one more. We are on a roll! The census will also tell you how commercially viable an area is. You can see the way consumers and businesses interact and use that information to find an ideal location for your business or to at least make your presence known. We can get even more particular with this information. We can also see what niches are selling where. Again, are you in the baby niche? You will find out that some areas are going to be better than others.

That is just the tip of the iceburg. There are a thousand ways you can use the information in the US census to help you improve your business. You can start by taking a look at the census data in your immediate location and compare it with another town or city.