Marketing a business in Springfield, MA

Who lives in Springfield, MA

Home values tell their own story; here the median is $298,800, 10 percent below the national figure. The median household in Springfield, MA earns $71,306 a year, 12 percent below the national figure (the US median is $80,734). Read together, they frame the buying power of the market.

The unemployment rate stands at 6%, about the same as the US share. The median resident is 40 years old, 1.1 years above the national median. Ownership: 62.2% of households own their home, 3 points below the US share. Bachelor's degree or higher: 29.3% of adults, 6 points below the US share.

Against the state as a whole, the median income is 31 percent lower than the Massachusetts figure, the median home value is 47 percent lower than the Massachusetts figure, and the number of businesses per resident is 23 percent thinner than the Massachusetts figure; see the Massachusetts page for the full figures.

The business landscape

There are 9,339 employer businesses in Springfield, MA. Per 1,000 people that is 20.2, 19 percent below the national figure. Of those, 561 are home-services contractors (plumbing and HVAC, electrical, roofing, concrete, specialty trades and landscaping), a 6% share of the business base, 1 points above the US share. The table breaks out the categories that spend the most on local advertising; restaurants is the biggest of them at 739.

Index: local share of all establishments divided by the US share; above 1 means the trade is more common here than nationally.

Crowded categories in Springfield, MA: road and paving contractors, grocery stores, automobile dealers and landscaping services. Road and paving contractors are the widest gap, 25 of them, 2.4 times the national share. Thinner than the national mix are concrete contractors and physicians' offices. With 12 locations, concrete contractors sit at about half of the national share. Roughly where the national mix would put them: plumbing and HVAC contractors, roofing contractors and specialty trade contractors.

Relative to population the leaders are restaurants (159.7 per 100,000 residents), grocery stores and landscaping services. The most numerous of the listed trades: restaurants with 739 establishments, then grocery stores (229) and landscaping services (217). By sector, automotive businesses are the most over-represented at 1.4 times the US share; medical and dental practices are the least, at about 83% of.

Implications for a local business

A crowded category like road and paving contractors, grocery stores and automobile dealers 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. Thin categories such as concrete contractors and physicians' offices are where the market has room. The searches still happen; there are simply fewer businesses answering them, so the first well-presented operator tends to collect the calls. With household income 12 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. A median age 1.1 years above the national median means a larger share of customers who still start with a Google search and read reviews before calling, so the search-plus-reviews stack earns its keep. With ownership at 62.2%, renters are a bigger share than usual; home-services advertisers do well to court property managers as well as households.