What’s the one key advanced element to true marketing and advertising of your small business? It’s simple: knowing your community.
To be simpler, knowing your target audience. Your demographic.
What it boils down to is the simple ability to target your flow of business, so you’ll always have it in and out of your doors. Small businesses count on it. If they don’t have the customers, they don’t have a company. Period.
Hence the Use of This Free Site: QuantCast
And what is this ‘Quantcast,’ you ask? Simply put: it’s an audience measurement site!
Basically, you have the power to literally count not only how many people click on the link for your web site, but what kind of people are clicking. Pretty nifty? Yes, in many ways.
An All-Inclusive Service
SEO is important, obviously. And if you have the ability to monitor the clicks on your web site, how many hits you get, you can definitely get an idea of how the marketing and advertising is working for you. Heck, you can even hire an SEO expert to rank you up top on Google if you want.
But just know that ‘cookies’ are different than people. And, apparently, that’s what Quantcast can do: recognize the difference.
It can measure the demographics of those viewing your web site — meaning, where they are located, areas, lifestyles, even the kind of browser they’re using at the moment they hit your site.
That’s pretty inclusive.
The Best Advantage of All
It should be obvious: it’s free. Makes sense if you happen to be a publisher such as LinkedIn or ABC or NBC or FOX Network or Spike or WordPress or Pandora.
Everything from cyberspace to the silver screen seems to be using Quantcast as a way to measure the audience and what the consumer base is leaning toward.
There is one thing to keep in mind, though, about this service….
Can a Local Business Benefit?
Possibly. Notice this one thing about many of the credentials Quantcast puts in on their site: these are all companies that have gone global.
Your cable TV networks out there aren’t exactly a small-town affair, folks. The whole world knows about them.
This sort of requires a major game changer in the ability to market and advertise your services to the correct audience. You need something all-inclusive like Quantcast if your audience goes beyond the local capacity. Makes sense?
However, if your business is more localized, all the features and data available at your disposal with Quantcast might be a little overwhelming! So tread lightly.
For instance: if you deal in home improvement contracting, you might not need to know how many families in your area have 2+ children, or live in a specific neighborhood, etc. etc. Some of that data is simply unnecessary.
Bottom Line
It’s worth a look, but your company needs to have a consumer expansion rate that’ll benefit from all the features Quantcast has to offer.
If you’re not looking to really grow and wish to only stick with a local community (which for many businesses is more than enough), you might not need the service.
Additional Keywords:
Business Demographic, Small Business Advertising, Targeted Marketing, Internet Traffic