Choosing a new location rarely comes down to finding one perfect piece of data. A busy area isn’t necessarily right for your business. A large population doesn’t guarantee sufficient demand. And the absence of competitors could represent an opportunity, or be a sign that the market simply isn’t there.
Effective location planning comes from bringing different types of evidence together and understanding what they tell you about a potential location. The precise mix will depend on the business and the decision being made, but these five data sets provide a useful starting point.
1. Your locations and competitor locations
For an established business, its existing network is one of the most useful places to begin. Mapping current locations helps you understand how the estate is distributed, where catchments may overlap and whether a proposed new site could draw customers away from an existing one. Looking at drive times and catchment areas can also highlight parts of the market that aren’t currently well served.
Competitor locations add another layer, and finding several competitors in an area doesn’t necessarily mean the market is saturated. Their presence could be evidence of strong demand. Equally, an area with very little competition isn’t automatically an untapped opportunity.
The useful question isn’t simply “Where are our competitors?” but “What does their presence, or absence, tell us about this market?”
2. Customer and demographic data
Knowing how many people live in an area is useful. Knowing whether they resemble the people most likely to buy from you is considerably more useful.
Demographic data can provide information about factors such as age, household composition, employment, income and affluence. Consumer datasets can add further context around interests, lifestyles and behaviours.
For businesses with existing customer data, the analysis can go further. Mapping where current customers come from can help reveal catchment patterns and identify the characteristics associated with stronger-performing markets. This isn’t about assuming that a particular demographic characteristic predicts whether somebody will become a customer. It’s about understanding the composition of different markets and comparing them with what you already know about your customer base.
3. Footfall and movement data
Population tells you who lives somewhere but it doesn’t necessarily tell you who is actually there. People travel into areas to work, shop, study, visit attractions, use transport hubs and spend their leisure time. As a result, the potential audience around a location can change significantly throughout the day, week or year.
Footfall and movement data can help reveal these patterns.
A city-centre location may be busiest during the working week, while a retail park could attract more visitors at weekends. A tourist destination may experience significant seasonal changes. Two locations with similar resident populations can therefore offer very different levels and types of opportunity. The important point isn’t simply how much footfall a location has, but whether the people and movement patterns are relevant to the business.
4. Transport and accessibility
A promising market isn’t much use if customers struggle to reach you.
Road connections, public transport, parking, walking routes and journey times can all influence the practical catchment of a location. The factors that matter most will depend on the business: convenience retail may rely heavily on nearby movement, while a destination business could draw customers from considerably further away.
Accessibility can also change the way apparently close locations compete with one another. A store five miles away with a straightforward journey may be more accessible than one only two miles away separated by congestion, poor transport links or other barriers.
Understanding how people can reach a location therefore adds important context to both customer and competitor analysis.
5. Surrounding businesses and amenities
No location operates in isolation, as nearby retailers, restaurants, workplaces, leisure facilities, schools, transport hubs and other amenities can all influence why people visit an area and how they use it.
Some businesses benefit from being close to complementary organisations. A café may gain from nearby offices, while a homewares retailer could benefit from being part of a wider retail destination. In other cases, the surrounding mix may tell you something about the type of area and the reasons people already travel there.
Changes matter too because a new housing development, transport connection, major employer or leisure destination can alter the potential of a location over time. Looking beyond the individual site helps build a better picture of the environment the business would actually be joining.
The real value comes from combining the data
None of these datasets gives you the answer on its own. A location might have an attractive demographic profile but weak footfall. Another might be extremely busy but difficult for your target customers to reach. An area with plenty of competitors could have enough demand to support another location, while somewhere with no competition may turn out to have very little potential market. That’s why Location Intelligence is more than putting individual datasets on a map.
Periscope® brings location, customer, demographic, competitor, movement and other relevant data together, allowing businesses to compare potential locations, explore catchments and understand the relationships between different factors.
The aim isn’t to find a mythical “perfect location” or predict whether a new site will succeed. It’s to build a stronger evidence base for deciding where to look more closely, which locations deserve further investigation and where the risks and opportunities may lie.
