Planning the Trip: How to Approach Local Business Research

Before going local — before you use the web to find business and market information — you have to prepare for the ride. Finding the kind of authoritative local information you need when you're making important decisions can be time-consuming, and it's not always cheap.

Local business information is very specialized, and it's costly to create. You'll find fewer online resources covering small geographic areas than those containing global, national, or even state-level information. Those that do provide detailed, local-level information will often charge a fee. Governments, associations, and other organizations within smaller geographic locations sometimes don't have the staff or budget needed to compile or maintain sources.

You'll make the best use of your local research time and dollars if you have a strategy — one that will direct you to the best sources and help you quickly drill to the local level. As with any good plan, your strategy for finding local business sources and information should include some flexibility, creativity, and a selection of alternative routes, just in case you don't come across exactly what you need. When you're researching a local area or using local sources for more in-depth coverage of a topic, where do you start?

Take a Geography Lesson

It sounds basic, but before you get started, make sure you learn a little about your targeted location. Are you researching Lakewood, Colorado, or Lakewood, California? In which county or metropolitan area is this neighborhood found? When working on a geography-based project, I like to run a search in Google Maps (maps.google.com) to view the boundaries and nearby places. A county or city website could also be a good starting point for learning about a location and might quickly lead you to some key resources.

In addition to learning about locations, your search for local information will be easier if you become familiar with some basic geographic concepts, including terminology and the various ways geographic areas can be broken down. Chapter 4, Local Demographics, covers some definitions and a brief discussion of geography types. Demographics: A Guide to Methods and Data Sources for Media, Business, and Government, by Steve Murdock, Chris Kelley, Jeffrey Jordan, Beverly Pecotte, and Alvin Luedke (Paradigm Publishers, 2006), includes a nice description of common ways that geography can be delineated.

Small Locations Don't Live in Isolation

More often than not, local business and market research shouldn't be limited to a particular geographic location. What happens in one location influences, and is influenced by, what's going on elsewhere. Local economies, for example, are often directly affected by state and national economic conditions. That's why it's a good idea to look at information about a geographic area in the following contexts:

• How it relates to larger geographic areas: Find out if the information about a location is consistent with what's happening on a national or state level. For example, many sources for local statistics include tables with comparisons to larger areas.

• How it relates to nearby geographic areas: Consider how information about one place compares with what is known about other cities, towns, or neighborhoods in the region. Can you find and easily compare, for example, the demographics of the cities and towns in a particular county?

• How it relates to similar geographic areas in other regions: Compare the findings for one location with others that are similar in size, demographics, climate, or other factors. As an example, you might want to see how one city's job-growth numbers look when compared with those of similar-sized cities in other parts of the country.

Take Time for a Reality Check

As I've said earlier in this chapter and in this book's introduction, when it comes to local business and market information, you're not always going to find exactly what you want. With all research, it's essential to manage your expectations from the very beginning, and this step is perhaps even more important when searching for local information.

Start by listing and evaluating your key questions:

• Prioritize the list so you can determine what information is essential and what's just "nice to know." More information is not necessarily better, and having too much will get in the way of what's really important.

• Check to see that the questions on your list aren't too specific. It's often easier to keep your questions more general and not impose too many limits on your search. For example, instead of searching for several specific economic indicators, try pulling in any of the indicators that you find that could help you piece together a picture of your location.

• Stop at regular intervals throughout the research process to review your priorities and revise your tactics. You might discover that in light of what you've found, a different approach might be more fruitful. You might also decide that the time is right to end your search.

Managing Your Clients' Expectations

Cynthia Shamel, Shamel Information Services

Managing expectations is an important part of managing clients and projects. Clear, open, and ongoing communication will lead to a mutual understanding about the scope, the deliverable, the costs, and the timeline. Whenever possible, negotiate all these parameters before you begin work. They are interdependent, and one will affect the other. Monitor the variables as you go along. Should anything change, notify your client immediately and renegotiate. It doesn't matter what triggers the change; it could be the client expanding the scope, the costs running higher than anticipated, or more time being required to analyze results. Whatever triggers the change, it is your responsibility to keep the four variables of scope, deliverable, costs, and timeline in balance. Be prepared to give and take, and then communicate the options to your client.

For example, a client recently asked for a complex research project with a short time frame and a specific format for delivering results. We agreed on a project strategy, and the client approved the anticipated costs. As work progressed, the client requested changes to the final report that significantly increased the time required to complete the project. We discussed alternatives. The scope, the due date, and the...