Way back, earlier this year I mentioned how knowing where your customers are is an important piece of alignment (see The Alignment Delta for more details).

If you’re too vague or unclear exactly where your best (or ideal) clients/customers are, your digital marketing efforts can often feel vague and unclear as well (especially for smaller, local businesses).

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of tracking your ideal customer/client description over time — something that can often change or shift as you grow your business.

One of the dimensions of that description is “where” your customers/clients are.

For some small businesses, this is a region or state, for others a city and for others yet, neighborhoods and other more hyper-local, granular areas.

As people move into and out of those areas, it’s an even more important dimension to keep an eye on.

For most small businesses, both time and budget can be very limited.

Trying to allocate that limited time and budget to “everywhere all at once” can sometimes be inefficient, and lead to poor results.

Isolating specific areas to focus on can be just as important, then, as detailing the other important descriptions of your client profiles.

Search Alignment

Using search to help tune your alignment is often very helpful, especially for younger small businesses.

When folks search for local services online, search engines are aware that most of them prefer a business that’s close in proximity.

If you want an HVAC company or house painter, it doesn’t make much sense for either the HVAC company, the house painter or the customer to connect when they are 1,000 miles away.

Stating that you are an HVAC company or house painter that services homeowners living in “X” city, then, helps you line up your digital marketing efforts accordingly.

Search Can Be An Early Indicator Of Change

As search will often help keep you aligned with customers that are close in proximity to your small business headquarters (or service areas), it can often help you spot early trends and change in those areas.

You might notice some customers that come through search becoming more valuable in some areas – and some areas that become less valuable.

This can be especially important if turnover in those areas (folks moving into and out of) is high – meaning that the potential for a mismatch for your ideal customer (outside of proximity) may go up.

What You Can Do

Track, measure & analyze – often.

Tracking your leads is important for any business, but can be especially important for small businesses, where small changes in local populations can often have more drastic effects.

If your target is small, there’s always going to be a finite amount of opportunities each year – so you have to make sure you’re ready if that finite number changes (or the quality of that finite number changes).

And that starts with measurement.