The Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently released the data of the 2016 Census. Here’s some quick facts the data revealed about Australia:
- Population: 23,401,892
- Females: 50.7%, Males: 49.3%
- Age 0-14: 18.7%, Age 15-64:65.6%, Aged >65: 15.7%
- Average weekly (gross) household income: $1,438
- Top 5 birth countries: Australia (66.7%), England (3.9%), New Zealand (2.2%), China (2.2%) and India (1.9%)
Most advice businesses don’t realise that the Census results can be useful to them as well.
What you might not know is that the ABS offers free downloadable Community Profiles that provide you with data about your local area (and market place). Typically there are a couple different profiles available. The state suburb profile is the best to take a look at if you want to have a look specifically at you own market place and you can download the community profile as an Excel file. To access the list of areas available, follow this link and type in your suburb.
Here’s 5 useful things you can learn from the Census data about the market place in which you operate. And sure there might be more than 5 but here’s a start…
1. Age ranges within a local area
We can safely say that certain age groups will require certain advice services. By looking at the age ranges within your local area, you can identify what the market place looks like and what the most popular services might be. A high 25-34 age group for instance might identify that there’s a lot of wealth accumulators who need advice around budgeting, saving and personal insurance.
2. Marital status
When a person is married, financial decisions often become joint decisions. There might be merit in marketing your services as couples advice or singles advice, depending on the kinds of relationships that exist within your community profile.
3. Language spoken at home
If you can speak a second language check out the statistics in your local area about languages spoken at home. You might find there’s a market place for your advice services to this audience.
4. Personal income by age and sex
You can also find out personal income by age and sex. This again is useful for aged based marketing segments. It might also help you identify what the main income segment and niche segments are.
5. Tenure and landlord type
Renters, property buyers and property owners is another way to view your market place. Renters are likely to need help to save for a deposit and money coaching, property buyers might need insurance and property owners might have the ability to build more wealth.
The free Community Profiles are useful and there’s a stack more data than what I’ve covered here including the type of property they own, if they have kids or not, the number of cars per household and faith group affiliations. So if you can get excited about data and your market place, take a look.
The secret to making good use of the Census Community Profiles is how you interpret the data.
What opportunities can you identify?
From that, what marketing activities will you undertake?
