Let’s say you have found the “perfect” city for your practice. Your next step is to collect information about that city and its neighborhoods and suburbs. You will use this information in several ways:

• To gain information on the variety of people in the area and assure the city in general is a good match for your marketing;
• To find a neighborhood that fits with your target market;
• To determine types of marketing and promotion activities that will be effective with your target market.

All cities and towns offer much information from which to choose. For most cities, here are the main pieces of demographic information you should be able to find:

• Total population;
• Number of households and average household income;
• Race, ethnicity and cultural heritage of population;
• Average education level of population compared to national average**;
• Average age of population compared to national average age*.

Once you have gathered this information, what should you do with it?

• Analyze the demographics to see if they support the type of practice you want, as described in your USP.

For example: If you want to serve people who are more educated, see if the population in your area is higher than average.**

Or, if you want to work with Hispanics, see what portion of the population they represent, and in what neighborhoods they are located.

The more closely the population fits with the type of people you want to work with, the easier it will be to market to them and the better “fit” you will have with your USP.

* The median age in 2000 for the non-Hispanic white population was 37.7; for non-Hispanic blacks, 30.2; for Native Americans, 28.0; for Asian and Pacific Islanders, 27.5; and for Hispanics, 24.6. (Source: MSN Encarta, http://encarta.msn.com)

** By 2005, the vast majority of the population, 85.2 percent, finished high school and over a quarter, 27.7 percent, earned a bachelor's degree. (Source: Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org)

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