The beauty about local search is how tangible it can be if you incorporate information about local circumstances.
If you think of the standard sales funnel (below), you already have pretty concrete numbers about your market potential.
Let’s take a close-up view of the 2,000 to 4,000 searches in your area. Does your web presence captures all it can, or even a fair share? First and foremost, your internet presence will simply not perform if it is not on Page 1. But there is another reason why you may be underperforming online: the commuting pattern of your prospective customers. Your search strategy is broad and encompasses greater service area of Anywheretown, USA, and yet it still doesn’t yield the expected results.
Well, you can just switch to a better Search Optimization (SEO) provider and website designer and start over, right?
Hold your high-horsepower engines for a little bit, hope is not a strategy.
The image below segments searching motorists – the highest potential of losing the share being the red pie segment. Those motorists don’t find it convenient to get to the business location and will select a different business.
So it becomes clear the importance of targeting motorists outside the obvious business location area. But how do we cover the entirety of prospective customers? And what if the commuting pattern opens area that are not obvious? What if local commuter trains offer the opportunity to drop the vehicle in the morning, and then take a train and pick up the vehicle in the evening?
Check below an area near Sacramento with the top five zip codes where existing customers of this shop live. They are marked with the % values of the existing customers. In addition, three of the zip codes feature the age profile, number of drivers, and median household incomes.
SO….
- What zip codes are most compelling for the shop to reach out to and why?
If we have learned anything, we know it is not necessarily the zip code where the shop is located. It is the zip code where motorists can easily drive to work or back, and have the income level and internet usage best for the shop to leverage.
And have you noticed that people living north of the business location don’t seem to visit the shop.
Using your existing records of Year Make Model visits and zip codes for your existing customers will make the selection of the best local search strategy as precise as possible so you get the best value.
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6 Responses to “Smart Funnels Create More Customers”
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Can i atract customers from a different zip code?
91709-Chino Hills like to be the first choice.
91710-Chino is the place of business 80% of customers are coming from Chino Hills.
Yes you can, at least in theory, it all depends on how compelling your offer is compared with the inconvenience to get to your shop.
Lets do an analysis of your current customers from the data base and your area, Henry.
I think Marks question is a great one, we find that about 1/2 of our daily business comes from people who work locally.
When we map our customer by their home zip codes we also find large pockets in distant zip codes? We assume that comes from a group of people who happen to live and work in the same area.
The question I have is can that be tracked by results of search of our site from specific areas/companies? Can companies be identified somehow if the work computer is used for the search?
Larry, I agree, it is a great question. What I am trying to say is that we need to look at commuting patterns to really be able to answer that question. I remember you telling me that your town triples its amount of people during the day, through the work place concentration. So it is highly convenient for them to check you out if it is nearby and an easy ride is possible. If you didn’t have that many customers, it could still be a great opportunity, since you are on their way home or to work, but they don’t know about you because you might have focused on their work place or home only.
Can you elaborate on the distant zip code statement? I am not sure I understand.
IP addresses can be tracked. Lets assume we knew it. What would you do with that information?
Do most people use shops near their house or near their place of work? It would be interesting to do the same mapping but use the customers work zip code. I would also like to see a average R/O per zip code from this shop compared to household income to see if they correlate.
Thanks Mark, great questions. I guess we would need to add both the work and home zip code and actually draw out the commute path to see the pattern. Would you mind if we added a question to the survey about that for your customers?
The average RO depends on many factors, e.g., age of the vehicle, vehicle type, duration the customer is with the shop and whether or not they let all the work done by one shop or just the repair and the minor service somewhere else etc.
I was thinking more along the lines to identify the biggest bang for the buck area when designing the smart funnel for new customers.