Marketing a business in Montana

People and buying power

Montana has 5 metropolitan statistical areas centered inside it; the largest is Billings, MT with 189,255 residents. Each has its own page below.

The median household in Montana earns $72,509 a year, 10 percent below the national figure (the US median is $80,734). The median home is worth $375,800, 13 percent above the national figure, which shapes what homeowners will spend on repairs and upgrades. Read together, they frame the buying power of the market.

The median resident is 40.4 years old, 1.5 years above the national median. Of 568,568 people in the labor force, 3.6% are unemployed, 2 points below the US share. 69.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, 4 points above the US share. Education: 35.2% with a bachelor's or higher, about the same as the US share.

Relative to Billings, MT, household income in Montana is 6 percent lower than the Billings metro figure, home values are 6 percent higher than the Billings metro figure, and businesses per 1,000 residents are 6 percent denser than the Billings metro figure.

Who is already competing here

County Business Patterns counts 42,566 employer establishments in Montana. Set against the population that is 38.1 per 1,000 residents, 52 percent above the national figure, against 25 nationally. The single largest category in the table below is restaurants, with 2,297 locations. 2,677 of them are home-services contractors, 6.3% of everything, 2 points above the US share.

The last column divides the local share of establishments by the national share (1.00 = the same mix as the US).

Crowded categories in Montana: concrete contractors, road and paving contractors, specialty trade contractors and electrical contractors. Concrete contractors lead at 251 establishments, 2.1 times the US share. By contrast physicians' offices, personal care services, beauty salons and grocery stores are comparatively scarce in Montana. Physicians' offices: 508 establishments, about half of the national share. General automotive repair, automobile dealers and legal services sit near their national proportions.

On a per-capita basis restaurants come first at 205.7 per 100,000, ahead of legal services and plumbing and HVAC contractors. The most numerous of the listed trades: restaurants with 2,297 establishments, then legal services (790) and plumbing and HVAC contractors (712). By sector, the home-services trades are the most over-represented at 1.3 times the US share; medical and dental practices are the least, at about 58% of.

Where the openings are

A crowded category like concrete contractors, road and paving contractors and specialty trade contractors rewards precision: exact-match search terms, service-area fencing, Local Services Ads where the trade is eligible, and a Business Profile that is answered daily. Broad campaigns get outspent. In physicians' offices, personal care services and beauty salons, the shortage of local establishments is an opening: the searches are there, the competition for them is not, and a listing that ranks plus a page that converts can own the category quickly. Where income runs 10 percent below the national figure, financing and clear pricing belong in the ad itself, not on a later page. With 69.2% of homes owner-occupied, the people searching for a plumber or a roofer here are usually the ones paying the bill, which shortens the sales cycle. An older-than-average market (median age 1.5 years above the national median) responds to search results, review counts and a phone number that is answered; it is less swayed by feed advertising.