THE MAP NERD

Small- and medium-sized enterprises tend to have the same data problem: from the moment any business begins to find success, it can be like a freight train going downhill. It becomes impossible to slow down, let alone stop. And let’s be real: you don’t want it to slow down, but you do want the clearest picture possible for where and how to keep your business growing.

As your business gains momentum, every customer — every sale — every job — is a datapoint that can inform the direction you take. The faster your business grows (hooray!), the harder it is to update and improve old processes, develop new processes, or take the time to analyze your collected data.

The Map Nerd is designed to aid with this exact problem, helping you answer questions ranging from “What ZIP codes should I buy ads in?” to “How do I map my customers?”

After all, no one wants to try to fix an airplane when it’s already in the air. (Really, you should have a map for that, too).

If you’re tracking customers in any way — with loyalty programs, mailing lists, or simply, an ongoing client list — you have extremely valuable data, especially if you have sales numbers to go with each customer.

Any time you collect a customer’s address, you have a key clue into the state of your business right in front of you. Unfortunately for most, this gold mine of critical data is likely being underutilized… after all, it probably just looks like a long list of names and addresses to most people.

But to The Map Nerd, it looks like your entire business as it exists today, existed in the past, and will exist in the future.

The Map Nerd can help you identify not only where your customers are coming from now, but where they used to be coming from — and help you predict where they likely will be coming from.

See, in real time, where you are gaining and losing business, the same way you know what products or services are gaining and losing sales. With this data, The Map Nerd can give you demographic breakdowns on where your customers are coming from, making it easier to identify where potential new customers reside.

And as a retailer, what could be more crucial to your growth than identifying the reach of your business and establishing your Primary Market Area?

“Location, Location, Location.” A trope as old as the hills, and just as true as the day it left Anonymous’s lips (Anonymous wrote a lot of really famous sayings, didn’t he?) Fortunately, we’ve never had so much information available as we do now to help you find that perfect spot.

Perhaps your business has grown to the point that you want to add another location… or, maybe you’re able to take your online store into the brick-and-mortar realm for your first location. The Map Nerd can help you learn where your best opportunities are to find your core customers, or out-position your competitors.

Even better, The Map Nerd can also help you analyze a potential location you’re considering by looking at traffic counts, demographics, competitor proximity, and barriers to migration, to name just a few of the crucial data sets we can analyze. In fact, if you already have data on your customers, we can even help you select a site that minimizes the cannibalization of your existing business.

Knowing where your core customers are located is extremely important: even in an increasingly online landscape, everything is still tied to… you guessed it: location (location, location). After all, if you’re, say, catering to women between 40 and 60, it makes very little sense to open a location in a neighborhood that is mostly men between the ages of 18-34. Or, maybe you have an area in mind that looks good now… but migration trends show it’ll be an undesirable spot in just a few years.

The Map Nerd can help you easily identify where your target demographics are living, and in what markets you could make your next big move.

One example: advertising. Location & demographics have become more important than ever in advertising. Think about it — if you’re Target, why would you send flyers advertising cribs and baby toys to an area with a predominantly aging, empty-nest population? Talk about wasted money, time, & effort. And while Target can afford to make that mistake, if you’re a small or mid-sized business, you don’t need us to tell you your margin of error is much, much slimmer.

The Map Nerd can help you identify what zip codes have your core customers in large numbers, allowing you to more efficiently advertise your products — in print, online, and through the media.