The SimplyMap team is looking forward to visiting with customers and others at the SLA Annual Conference, coming to Boston on June 14-16.
Come visit us at Booth #916, we are happy to answer product questions, share tips and tricks, and talk data. We also love hearing about how you are using SimplyMap to support your research!
We will also be raffling off a $100 Amazon Gift Card!
The INFO-EXPO Hours when the exhibit will be open:
Sunday June 14 – 11:30 am – 7:00 pm
Monday June 15 – 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Tuesday June 16 – 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
In this week’s SimplyMap report, we want to share with you the many options available when exporting maps in SimplyMap. In SimplyMap, when a user selects Export Map Image from the Actions bar, you will be presented with a 3 step export process. This report will cover all options available from each step. Let’s get started!
Step 1 – CROPPING
The arrows in the image below refer to the Standard Size and Orientation of your cropping square. Changing either of these options will alter the cropping square to your selection.
Options available for Standard Size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid Orientation: Portrait or Landscape
If you prefer instead to customize the size and shape of your cropping area, you may do so by clicking and dragging along an edge or corner of the box until the area meets your desired specifications. Example shown below:
In this week’s edition of exploring SimplyMap data, we spotlight the Consumer Buying Power® data package in SimplyMap.
What is it? The Nielsen Consumer Buying Power® database incorporates geography-based estimates of potential annual consumer spending for more than 350 household expenditure items.
This effectively allows researchers to determine a target area for potential consumers or buyers of a given type of product. Let’s take a look at an example.
Scenario: You want to identify target cities in Florida that would be most interested in home cooking products and appliances.
Using the CBP dataset, we can easily locate some target cities. Here’s how:
First, create a ranking report using Florida as the location. Next, navigate through the following path to select the variable, CBP: Food At Home (HH Avg).
Next, use the Analyze Data By feature and select cities to reveal your target areas.
And that’s all there is to it! You might then be only interested in cities with a population of at least 50k. This can easily be done by applying a data filter (read more here). The new results are shown below:
Interested in specific maps or a particular dataset? Let us know!
In this week’s SimplyMap report, we explore one of the newer datasets available: Retail Market Power®.
What is it? In short, the Retail Market Power® dataset helps users identify opportunities within the industry they are targeting. These gaps are identified by analyzing expenditures and retail sales. Marketers can focus on targeting areas where the expenditures far exceed the total sales.
Let’s take a look at an example.
Scenario: You are thinking of opening up a jewelry store in your ZIP code, but first you want to determine if there is a need for one, and discover if people in the area readily buy jewelery.
Solution: First, open a Standard Report and use your ZIP code as the location. Next, navigate through the Retail market Power category in the Variables menu to find jewelry store expenditures and sales in your location. After selecting the correct variables, close out the Variables menu to generate your report.
The report is shown below:
According to the above results, there is a fairly large gap in the jewelry store industry in the 44146 ZIP code where expenditures are greatly exceeding sales. Many residents must be spending their money at jewelry stores outside of the ZIP code, creating an opportunity for more jewelry stores to site locally.
The above scenario is a brief look at this dataset. Explore the other 17 category folders and let us know some interesting figures you come across!
Lastly, don’t forget to enter into our Winter Sweepstakes where we’ll be giving away an iPad and Kindle Fire! Details here: Winter Sweepstakes!
Can you guess which US city has the most residents per square mile? Today we’re going to use SimplyMap to answer this question for all cities, as well as cities with a population greater than 100,000. The variable we will be using is a Census Variable, Population Density (per sq. mile), 2014.
First, create a new Ranking Report, and set the geography to USA. Next, navigate through this path to select the variable mentioned above: Census Data » In 2010 Geographies » People and Households » Population » Total.
As a benchmark, the USA comes in with a density of 89 people per square mile.
To change how we analyze the variable by, utilize the Analyze Data By feature to analyze USA by States. Doing so yields the following:
Not surprising, DC comes in first at a density of 10,647 with New Jersey coming in a far off 2nd place at 1,212. Next, we will analyze this variable by city. Unfiltered results yields the following top 10 cities:
Guttenberg, NJ is the most densely populated incorporated place in the country with a staggering 59,380 people per square mile. A little research into Guttenberg, NJ reveals that the town itself is only 4 blocks wide, with a population of 11,176! It’s easy to see how Guttenberg would be ranked first overall in the United States.
Lastly, apply a population filter to only reveal cities with a population greater than 100,000. The results are shown below:
New York, NY and Jersey City, NJ rank first and second respectively as the highest population density per sq. mile for larger cities.
Are there any reports that you would personally like to see? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!
Have you already entered for your chance to win an iPad or Kindle Fire? We will be holding the drawing on April 17, 2015. To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook to get your name in consideration.
In this week’s SimplyMap tip, we outline the process of creating a radius location. Radius locations are a great way to quickly gather information from an area surrounding a target address or neighborhood. In this example, we want to pull information from a 3 mile radius around a university campus.
First, open the locations panel in SimplyMap and Find location by: Block Groups. Next, Find the block group by address. When SimplyMap finds your location, select Create custom location and choose Radius.
Enter your value in the available box, and give this location a name. Select Use This Location, and pick a variable of your choosing to quickly create a map. SimplyMap will generate a 3 mile radius around the address entered, as shown below.
Another great feature of radius locations is that they function as a custom location that can be used for reports. To quickly make a report, select Actions > Make Ranking from Map.
This will generate a ranking report of all the smaller geographies within the 3 mile radius from campus. Similarly, you can create a Standard Report or Location Analysis report using your new radius location.
Standard Report with Radius Location
Location Analysis Report with Radius Location
We hope you found this week’s SimplyMap tip to be helpful. Stay tuned for more!
Have you already entered for your chance to win an iPad or Kindle Fire? We will be holding the drawing on April 17, 2015. To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook to get your name in consideration.
SimplyMap is an excellent tool for market research, and it’s made even more powerful by Nielsen PRIZM data. Nielsen PRIZM is the highest quality market segment data available. Every household in the United States is assigned to one of 66 segments, and Nielsen provides detailed information about each segment, such as demographic characteristics, shopping habits, financial and technology preferences, media habits, and much more.
PRIZM segments define every U.S. household in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or “segments,” to help marketers discern those consumers’ likes, dislikes, lifestyles and purchase behaviors. Used by thousands of marketers within Fortune 500 companies, PRIZM provides the “common language” for marketing in an increasingly diverse and complex American marketplace.
Let’s start by identifying the largest PRIZM segments in some target locations.
First, create a Standard Report using your target locations. We’ll compare some different ZIP codes within and including the city of Boston, MA. Next, navigate to the PRIZM segments. You will want to select each # segment within that folder. Lastly, close the window to generate your report.
To locate the highest segment within each location, hover over a location and select Sort Descending. SimplyMap will reprocess the report, showing the highest figure at the top for the selected location.
Here are the results for each ZIP code and the city of Boston.
02210: Young Digerati 02115: Urban Achievers Boston: Bohemian Mix
To find out more information about each segment, hover over the segment and select View Metadata. The metadata for each segment above is presented below:
ZIP Code 02210: Young Digerati
ZIP Code 02115: Urban Achievers
Boston, MA: Bohemian Mix Metadata
We hope you enjoyed this week’s blog. Stay tuned for more reports and SimplyMap tips! If you haven’t already, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook to get yourself entered into our Winter Sweepstakes!
Our recent trip to Chicago exhibiting at the ALA Midwinter Meeting inspired this week’s SimplyMap blog post. Today, we’re going to demonstrate how to use business points in SimplyMap to answer a basic question that a person opening a business might ask – what’s the competition like in the area?
To emulate a real world scenario, we only want to look at a specific area. In this example, our location will be “The Loop” in Chicago. The Loop in Chicago is composed of these ZIP codes: 60601, 60602, 60603, 60604, and parts of 60605, 60606, 60607, and 60616.
First, create a custom location that is composed of the aforementioned ZIP codes.
Next, select a pertinent variable for your map. In this example, we will use: Food away from home (Household Average), 2014 to identify the areas where people tend to eat out for meals.
Now that you have a map showing the custom area mapped with the chosen variable, you can add the relevant business points.
Select “Businesses” from the left panel and type in the search “pizza restaurant”. Select “show businesses” and SimplyMap will place a point on the address of each relevant business.
Lastly, to see a list of these business points in a report, select “Actions” from the top right of SimplyMap and click “Make Report from Businesses”. Here’s a sample of what to expect:
We hope you enjoyed this week’s SimplyMap report. Stay tuned for more interesting reports and tips!
Have you already entered for your chance to win an iPad or Kindle Fire? We will be holding the drawing on April 17, 2015. To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook to get your name in consideration.
In this week’s report exploring SimplyMap data, we want to find out where America’s remote workers reside. To find this, we can tap into the Census data in SimplyMap. The specific variable is titled: % Employment, Work at Home, 2014.
To get started ranking geographies, first select New Ranking at the top of the SimplyMap screen. Next, locate the variable by following this path: Census Data » In 2010 Geographies » People and Households » Employment » Travel to Work » Mode.
Lastly, to view this data by state select Locations, and set it to USA.
From the Analyze Data By dropdown, select “States” to rank the USA by all states. The results are shown below:
At 7.41%, Vermont ranks first in the US for remote workers. For reference, the national percentage is 4.38. Does anyone have insight as to why Vermont ranks first? A list of the most common employment industries in Vermont is below:
Lastly, we can look at the data by a different geography – change the Analyze Data By dropdown to display Cities. We can also apply a population filter to only show cities with a population greater than 100,000. Here are the results:
Boulder, CO ranks first in the United States for Work at Home employees. We think this could be attributed to the number of software and tech firms that have opened up or moved to that city in recent years.
We hope you found this SimplyMap report interesting. Stay tuned for more SimplyMap tips and interesting data reports.
Have you already entered for your chance to win an iPad or Kindle Fire? We will be holding the drawing on April 17, 2015. To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook to get your name in consideration.
