Marketing a business in Arizona

The market's people

Across Arizona there are 7 metropolitan areas with their own profiles on this site; Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ is the largest at 5.03 million residents.

The median household in Arizona earns $79,964 a year, in line with the national figure (the US median is $80,734). The median home is worth $394,500, 19 percent above the national figure, which shapes what homeowners will spend on repairs and upgrades.

Age first: the median is 39, about the same as the national median. A labor force of 3,598,840 carries an unemployment rate of 5.1%, about the same as the US share. Homeownership stands at 67.4%, 2 points above the US share. 33.3% of adults over 25 hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 2 points below the US share.

Relative to Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ, household income in Arizona is 9 percent lower than the Phoenix metro figure, home values are 11 percent lower than the Phoenix metro figure, and businesses per 1,000 residents are 3 percent thinner than the Phoenix metro figure.

The local business base

There are 162,845 employer businesses in Arizona. Density runs 22.1 businesses for every 1,000 residents, 12 percent below the national figure. The home-services trades that most often advertise locally number 7,913 establishments, a 4.9% share, about the same as the US share. The most numerous category on this page is restaurants at 11,974.

Reading the index: 1.00 matches the national mix, 1.50 means half again as common here, 0.50 half as common.

Where competition is thickest: self-storage operators, physicians' offices and plumbing and HVAC contractors all hold a larger share of the local base than they do nationally. Self-storage operators stand out with 530 locations, 1.5 times what the national mix would predict. On the other side, child day care services, grocery stores, general freight trucking and landscaping services are thin: fewer establishments per resident than the US pattern. Child day care services number just 965, about 60% of the US share, which is room for a well-run operator to be the obvious choice. Roofing contractors, electrical contractors and concrete contractors track the US share closely.

Per 100,000 residents: restaurants 162.3, followed by physicians' offices and legal services. In absolute numbers restaurants lead with 11,974, followed by physicians' offices at 5,309 and legal services at 3,494. Across the groups, medical and dental practices run 1.2 times the US share and trucking, storage, real estate and road construction about the same as.

Implications for a local business

With self-storage operators, physicians' offices and plumbing and HVAC contractors over-indexed, the cost of a click rises and so does the value of everything that happens after it: a page that loads fast, a number that is answered, a review profile that settles the comparison. Where the base is thin (child day care services, grocery stores and general freight trucking), reach beats refinement: cover the service-plus-place searches across the whole area, because there are few competitors to split them with. With a median age about the same as the national median, the classic path of search, reviews and a phone call still carries most of the business.