Competitor Territory Mapping
In any business, true situational awareness requires not just knowing where your customers are, but where your competitors are, too. In fact, the two go hand in hand. To understand your customer base, you need to know how they interact with other businesses in the region — where they shop, what they want and how they get where they need to go.
Competitor territory mapping is a useful tool for strategic planning and market analysis. Regardless of what industry you're in, your business can benefit from an increased awareness of your competition and the customers they attract.
What Is Competitor Territory Mapping?
A competitor territory map is a visual representation of the location of your competitors. On its own, it can be a powerful tool for identifying your biggest threats and most lucrative opportunities. However, when overlaid with other information — such as your previous sales records or demographic data from the U.S. Census, it can yield insights that will be extremely useful in big-picture strategic planning.
For example, a competitor research map can show you the local demographics of the neighborhoods where your competition has a significant presence. From there, you can target your marketing specifically to appeal to these groups, eating into their customer base. Alternately, it can show you which types of customers are currently underserved in a region.
Mapping competitors is useful when creating sales territories, in that it helps you assign your strongest team members to areas where their expertise is needed most. It's also a powerful tool for site selection when expanding your business, as it shows you the areas with the most risk — and greatest potential for reward — when planning for a new location.
Working With Competitor Analysis Maps
MapBusinessOnline contains multiple tools for competitor mapping and analysis. Some of the ways you can organize your data include:
- Heat maps: Heat maps show you areas with a high concentration of competitors — hotter colors mean a more saturated market. They also show you areas that are underserved by businesses in your industry. MapBusinessOnline's heat maps are fully customizable based on a range of metrics and visualization options.
- Radius maps: Radius maps are one of the most useful tools for competitor research. They show you how much of a given dataset is within a specific radius. Use radius maps to map your nearest competitors and their service areas, or find out how many potential customers are located near a given site.
- ZIP code maps: MapBusinessOnline also gives you the option of sales competitor mapping within a specific ZIP code, municipality, census tract or another custom-defined territory. ZIP code maps are great for allocating resources such as sales staff, or getting a clearer picture of where your competitors are and who they serve.
These are just a few of the many competitor mapping features you'll find in MapBusinessOnline. Keep exploring this website to learn more and read detailed case studies. To try out MapBusinessOnline today, sign up for one of the many convenient subscription packages or download a risk-free 1-month trial.
See MapBusinessOnline in Action
Request a demo
Learn How Our Customers are Succeeding with MapBusinessOnline
"I use it daily to visualize customers and sales territories, and to plan sales trips. It’s so intuitive."
Jeanne Gazlay
Life Brokerage sales Director
Mutual of Omaha
"Very satisfied and happy with the program! Our organization was a little nervous when we found out we had to replace MapPoint. Once we came across MapBusinessOnline, we knew we had found the program for us. Not only are there many features for the map creators, there are also a lot of usable features for the individuals that receive the view-only shared maps. This is a great program and with the way our organization is changing, I have no concern about recommending it to other internal departments."
Business Manager
I-Car
The Alternative Board (TED), an advisory board creation service for business of all types and sizes, used MapPoint to import customer locations, create and manage territories, and for visual market analysis. When MapPoint left them high and dry, they began looking for a MapPoint replacement. This process led them to MapBusinessOnline.
Over a period of a few weeks MapBusinessOnline shared several online web demo that showed exactly how MapBusinessOnline would replace and improve upon the mapping technology TED had become used to. The Alternative Board recently renewed their Map Business Online subscription for another year.
The Alternative Board
Popular MapBusinessOnline features
Design and visualize sales territories
Build fast map visualizations of your business data
Display business data against demographic maps
Draw custom graphics and annotate maps
Print large format map views
Share business maps
Search data spatially with radius maps
Create state or regional map views
