Akron, OH: a market profile for local advertisers

People and buying power

Income in Akron, OH: a median of $72,371 per household against $80,734 nationally, so 10 percent below the national figure. The typical owner-occupied home is valued at $213,000, 36 percent below the national figure. Together they say a good deal about the ticket sizes a local business can expect.

The household mix in brief. Unemployment 5.1%, about the same as the US share. Median age 41, 2.1 years above the national median. Ownership: 68.1% of households own their home, 3 points above the US share. 35.1% of adults over 25 hold a bachelor's degree or higher, about the same as the US share.

Compared with Ohio: income is about the same as the Ohio figure, home values are about the same as the Ohio figure, and business density is 8 percent denser than the Ohio figure.

The business landscape

Start with the count: 16,360 establishments with payroll. Set against the population that is 23.4 per 1,000 residents, 6 percent below the national figure, against 25 nationally. The table breaks out the categories that spend the most on local advertising; restaurants is the biggest of them at 1,268. Home-services trades account for 771 of them (4.7% of all establishments, about the same as the US share).

Ratio above 1.00: the trade holds a bigger share of the local business base than it does nationally; below 1.00, a smaller one.

Relative to the national mix, road and paving contractors, landscaping services, roofing contractors and concrete contractors take up an outsized slice of the Akron, OH business base. Road and paving contractors stand out with 24 locations, 1.3 times what the national mix would predict. Thinner than the national mix are self-storage operators, electrical contractors, plumbing and HVAC contractors and real estate lessors. Self-storage operators are the clearest gap with 19 establishments, about half of the share they hold across the US. Close to the national mix: specialty trade contractors, general automotive repair and dentists.

Adjusted for population, restaurants are the thickest on the ground (181.2 per 100,000), with physicians' offices and personal care services next. Three categories dominate by count: restaurants at 1,268, physicians' offices at 341 and personal care services at 340. Grouped, automotive businesses hold 1.2 times the share they hold nationally, while legal services sit at about 80% of.

How to advertise in Akron, OH

Advertisers in road and paving contractors, landscaping services and roofing contractors should assume high competition on Google Ads and put equal weight on the free real estate: an accurate Business Profile, steady new reviews, and pages that match the local searches word for word. Where the base is thin (self-storage operators, electrical contractors and plumbing and HVAC contractors), reach beats refinement: cover the service-plus-place searches across the whole area, because there are few competitors to split them with. With household income 10 percent below the national figure, price transparency and financing matter more in the ad copy, and a phone call is usually the conversion to optimize for. Residents here are older than the US median (2.1 years above the national median); they search, read reviews and call, which puts the weight on search, the listing and the phone.