Marketing a business in South Carolina

Income, homes and households

Statewide numbers first; the 8 metro pages linked below carry the same breakdown for each market. The biggest of them, Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC, holds 961,939 residents.

Home values tell their own story; here the median is $259,000, 22 percent below the national figure. Household income runs $69,324 here, which is 14 percent below the national figure. Read together, they frame the buying power of the market.

Three quick reads on the people of South Carolina. Residents skew older than the national median: 40.2 years, 1.3 years above the national median. Among adults 25 and over, 32.1% have at least a bachelor's degree, 4 points below the US share. The civilian labor force numbers 2,560,429 people with unemployment at 4.9%, about the same as the US share. 71.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, 7 points above the US share.

South Carolina versus Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC: income 3 percent lower than the Greenville metro figure, home values about the same as the Greenville metro figure, business density 3 percent thinner than the Greenville metro figure.

Who is already competing here

There are 122,958 employer businesses in South Carolina. Per 1,000 people that is 23.2, 7 percent below the national figure. Of those, 6,679 are home-services contractors (plumbing and HVAC, electrical, roofing, concrete, specialty trades and landscaping), a 5.4% share of the business base, about the same as the US share. The most numerous category on this page is restaurants at 9,731.

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

Crowded categories in South Carolina: specialty trade contractors, automobile dealers and self-storage operators. Specialty trade contractors stand out with 1,484 locations, 2.4 times what the national mix would predict. On the other side, roofing contractors, real estate lessors, personal care services and physicians' offices are thin: fewer establishments per resident than the US pattern. Roofing contractors are the clearest gap with 300 establishments, about 80% of the share they hold across the US. Plumbing and HVAC contractors, landscaping services and road and paving contractors sit near their national proportions.

Per resident the densest are restaurants at 183.7 per 100,000 people, then legal services and physicians' offices. By raw count the largest categories here are restaurants (9,731), legal services (2,760) and physicians' offices (2,639). Taken as groups, the strongest relative to the US mix are the home-services trades (about the same as the national share) and the weakest are medical and dental practices (about 85% of).

What this means for advertising here

Many competitors in specialty trade contractors, automobile dealers and self-storage operators means the auction is expensive and the map pack is crowded; the winners are the profiles with the freshest reviews and the pages that answer the search precisely. For roofing contractors, real estate lessors and personal care services, the opportunity is coverage. Few competitors means the business that shows up for every nearby town and every variant of the search collects most of it. Incomes 14 percent below the national figure mean value and clarity carry the message; offers should be plain and the path to a call short. With a median age 1.3 years above the national median, the classic path of search, reviews and a phone call still carries most of the business. Homeownership of 71.9% is above the national share; more of the households that search for home services are also the ones that decide and pay.