What Is the Geographic Market for Your Business?

For most companies, there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a customer chooses to do business with you. Things like quality and availability of products and services are key factors that are at least partially in your control. You can improve on them and master them. But there are some factors that are out of your control. One of those is the distance limitations for your geographic market.

Understanding your geographic market

Distance for geographic market is a metric measures the number of miles that customers will travel to do business with you. Beyond that distance, a customer is very unlikely to work with you. Geographic market varies within industries and regions, but most businesses, especially physical, brick and mortar ones, have one. In order to understand the geographic market for your equipment dealership, you have to look at the locations of your customers to see whether distance is a factor and how important of a factor it is in developing your customer base.

Why does geographic market matter for equipment dealers?

If you determine that distance is a factor for your customers, it will be very difficult to retain ones that are beyond the range that is comfortable for them to travel. For example, most heavy equipment dealers have a service area that is usually a maximum of 60 miles. The primary reason is that beyond that distance the dealer won’t be able to reach a customer who needs emergency service quickly enough.

When you have difficulty gaining and keeping customers beyond a certain distance or outside of a certain geographic market, it’s not worth trying to sell your products and services to them. To avoid wasting money targeting customers that are extremely unlikely to work with you anyway, it’s critical to know how far the reach is for your company.

How to take advantage of distance to geographic market

Distance from a customer is something you don’t have much control over. But you can use the knowledge of your range to your benefit. It’s important for equipment dealers and other types of businesses to conduct a market analysis of potential customers to determine how large their potential market is and exactly what the distance is for their maximum reach.

This analysis will help guide your marketing strategy and keep you from wasting resources on leads and prospects that are unlikely to work with you, regardless of how great your services are or how effective your marketing is. By understanding your company’s distance for geographic market, you will be more focused and effective in building your customer base. In the long run, this focus will help you save money, tailor your marketing and sales message more specifically, and become extremely proficient at serving the customers in your area. You won’t be wasting time and resources chasing down far away business that will never convert.

What is your geographic market? Do you how to identify prospects within that market, so you can convert them to customers?

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