Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/109821
Industry Trends ���Mapping demographic characteristics such as median age allow a company to see who is buying their products and where they should target future marketing efforts. Gibbons recognized this disparity. ���While our primary use was in B2C-type businesses, we also found numerous B2B uses over the years,��� he notes. ���Overlaying construction projects with areas that have a high water table for a company that made industrial pumps to drain water from construction sites comes to mind.��� The Right Data for the Right Company Meeting the challenges of second-stage companies requires a good deal of flexibility on the part of each ���Applying techniques such as drive-time analysis and potential competitor mapping allow businesses to quickly evaluate new markets. 28 G E O W O R L D / F E B R U A R Y 2 O 1 3 GIS practitioner and often some adaptation on the use of existing GIS tools. Working in large-scale economicgardening programs, such as the statewide Florida Economic Gardening Institute (www.growfl.com) at the University of Central Florida, requires the use of powerful business-targeted geospatial tools, such as Esri���s Business Analyst software. This tool was selected because it allows integration of company data, powerful visualization and reporting tools, and includes a massive amount of demographic and business-specific data. The flexibility of the technology and data is essential because of the wide variety of companies that may work with an economicgardening project���whether B2C, B2B, Business-toGovernment or some combination of all three. A second-stage B2C company often is a manufacturer or reseller of products. Most companies in this space are selling online, through mail order or a retail distribution mechanism. For these companies, location and demographic information can be extraordinarily valuable. The following are two example cases: Esmerelda���s Dresses ���Esmerelda���s Dresses��� sells upscale clothing through its online store. The company had 30,000 visitors to its Web site each year, but only 5,000 paying customers. Through online analytics, it knows roughly where the visitors are coming from, and through mailing addresses it knows exactly where paying customers reside. Through GIS, visitors and customers were mapped, and certain demographic characteristics of each were highlighted. Further analysis, using tools such as Esri���s Tapestry Segmentation data, looked at the personality traits that identify a paying customer and develop market-ranking reports that highlight other parts of the country where these customers may exist. ���Esmerelda��� can use this information to tweak online advertising and better target paying customers. Data to support the B2B company takes a bit of additional tweaking to develop relevance to a second-stage company CEO. One of the key data attributes used for this audience are industry code classifications���all companies have an assigned or self-reported code. Through the use of industry codes and geographic boundaries, the market potential for a company can be better understood. Gates IT Services ���Gates IT Services��� has been doing well, but feels it has saturated the local insurance, real estate and accounting market in which it currently specializes. It wants to start looking beyond current markets and ensure it���s not missing customers in the local area.