How-to Put Your Business on the Map with Google Earth

February 13, 2008 11:42 am Steve Gordon
Filed in Business Thought, GIS, Geography, Real Estate

We’re big believers in the power of maps to communicate to people. After all a picture is worth a thousand words and probably worth ten thousand business reports. We think Google Earth and the technology it’s built on (Geographic Information Systems) are game changers for business. The problem to date has been that these great tools have been hard to use. Worse the pros in the field seem to want to make things too complex. We believe using maps for decision making in business (and government & non-profit, too) can be simple. To demonstrate we put together this tutorial on how maps can be used in an organization for free in a couple of hours.

With the right maps we can answer important business questions such as:

• Do you know where your customers are?
• How much money do they make?
• How old are they?
• Do they have kids?
• Do they own a home or rent?

How much do you really know?

Have you ever done a customer profile? What’s keeping you from doing one? Time…money…don’t know how?

Today, we’re going to put our customers on the map, get to know them a bit better and look at our market area. We’re going to cover the tools you need and where to get them, the map and demographic data that’s available to you and some ideas for how you can use Google Earth in your business. All of the tools and data we’ll talk about today are free so you can do this with your own customer list when you get back to the office.

What You Need

You only need four tools to do everything we’ll cover and you probably have the first one—Excel. You’ll also need Google Earth, a geocoding tool (more on this in a minute) and some demographic data.

Your Customer List in Excel

You’ll need your customer list in an excel spreadsheet. Most accounting and contact management programs will export your list to Excel. Once there, you’ll need to add a row at the top for column titles (like address, city, state, zip and customer name). Your customer list must include the street address, city, state and zip code for each customer. You may also include the customer’s name and other information if you like. Hang on to this we’ll use it in a minute.

Download Google Earth

Go to http://earth.google.com and click on the big, green download button. There are three versions of Google Earth—you want the free one.

Geocoding Tools

Next we’ll need to geocode your customer addresses. Geowhat? Geocoding is the process of taking an address and computing a latitude and longitude so that the customer’s location can be put on the map. Sounds complicated (and it is). Luckily there are a number of free or inexpensive tools available for doing this. My favorite is batchgeocode.com. It’s free and very simple to use, as we’ll see.

Demographic Data

The demographic data we’ll use is from the 2000 Decennial US Census. It’s published by the US Census Bureau at http://factfinder.census.gov. While it’s always good to go to the source, the Census Bureau site can be confusing to navigate. We also, can’t get the information in a format Google Earth uses. To get the Census data in the “KML” format that Google Earth reads, you can go to Imran Haque’s great site “gCensus” at http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/.

Now that we know what we need, let’s get our business mapped!

How to Map Your Business in Three Steps

Step 1: Put Your Customers on the Map.

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We’ve recorded a movie to demonstrate the steps. Let’s open our customer list in Excel. First we’re going to delete some columns we don’t need (this is optional). We’re left with the address, city, state, zip and name columns. Select all of the cells in your list and copy them to the clipboard.

Now in your web browser go to www.batchgeocode.com. There are six easy steps to geocoding your list. In Step 1, keep the default option for “Tab Delimited” format. Under Step 2, select the text that’s in the entry box and delete it. Then paste your list in the box. In Step 3, click the “Validate Source” button to validate the format of your list.

Step 4 is where we tell the program what’s in each of the columns in our list. It does a good job of guessing based on our column names. We do need to tell it which column contains the state. It has guessed that we want to use the customer name as the title for each customer location. Leave everything else in Step 4 as it is. Click the “Run Geocoder” button in Step 5 to start geocoding your addresses. Depending on how many customers you have this can take a while. When it’s done, you will see a map of your customers on the web page. Now click the “Download to Google Earth (KML) File” button below the map. This will download a file of your customer locations to your computer.

Step 2: Get Demographics from gCensus

Now let’s go get some demographics from gCensus. Open your browser and go to http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/. Click the “To get started mapping, click here” link just below the page title. There is a TON of data on this site, but it is really easy to navigate. There are two things you need to know before we get the data.

First, the Census Bureau groups information into three types of areas—blocks, block groups and census tracts. Blocks give you the most detailed map and usually represent the households on a city or suburban block. Census tracts, have the least detail and block groups are in between. You’ll want to get blocks groups when you can and blocks as a second choice. Census tracts aren’t really useful when you’re looking at a single county.

The second thing you need to know is which summary file to use. For population demographics like total population, age, sex, race and number of households use “US Census 2000 Summary File 1” and get the data at the block group level. For household income and related data, use “US Census 2000 Summary File 3” and get the data again at the block group level.

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This screencast shows how to download total population and median household income. To get total population click the red “Census 2000 Summary File 1” link on the left. Click “State” in the center, then click “Florida.” Click “County”, then scroll down to “St. Lucie County” and click it. Now we get a list of all of the available statistics (hundreds of them).

Click “Total Population,” then “Total.” Now we can pick how detailed we want our map to be. We’ll choose “Block Group.” Now click the red “Show/hide advanced mapping options” link in the center. You can pick one of three color schemes to use for your map and set the number of “bins” to group the data in. Set this to 5 or 7. Now click the red “Click here to download your map” link. Your map will be generated and a link will be placed on the right side of the page. Click this link to download your map to your computer in Google Earth KML format.

Now we’ll do the same for median household income. This information is in “US Census 2000 Summary File 3” We’ll get this information at the block group level.

Now that we’ve got some data let’s see it in Google Earth!

Step 3: See it in Google Earth

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Ok. Let’s see what this looks like in Google Earth. From the file menu select “Open.” We’ll select the Customers.kml, Median Income.kmz and Total Population.kmz. Don’t worry about the different file extensions, kmz is just a zipped form of kml. Now let’s zoom in by typing “Port St. Lucie, FL” in the fly to field. Now you can see colored regions from the Census files and dots at each customer location. The three map layers have been added to our Temporary Places in the list on the left.

We’ll drag and drop the map layers under “My Places” in the list on the left so they’ll be there the next time we use Google Earth. Now let’s look at the Total Population map. The red areas have a high population, the blue areas have a low population and the shades of purple are in between.

Let’s turn-off the population map and turn-on the Median Income map. Higher incomes are in the darker areas while lower incomes are lighter green.

We also have a map of females, age 25-29 that we downloaded earlier. This is is just one example of the very detailed segmentation you can get from the Census. Here we see that women in this age group are concentrated between I-95 and the Florida Turnpike. It’s likely that this area will also have a high concentration of newlyweds, new homeowners and young families.

My store is located right in this concentration. What does that tell you about the products and services I should be offering?

Now let’s add our competitors to the map. I know where they are so we’ll just add a place mark and drag it to their location. Now I can see who’s best positioned to reach the market. I can also look for areas that aren’t served.

Now let’s look at our customers. As we move the mouse over each customer location the customer’s name appears. If we click on the customer’s dot, we can see more information and get driving directions.

It’s also easy to share a map with someone. Just go to the Edit menu, click Copy, then Copy Image. The map you’re viewing is sent to the clipboard. Now you can paste it in a report or presentation.

Now you can know what the big-guys know…

McDonald’s pioneered the use of this technology in business in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. Wal-Mart uses satellite images to check traffic at its stores by counting cars in the parking lot. Insurance companies use these techniques to target new customers while balancing their risk in any one location. This type of analysis used to be out of reach for small and medium businesses. Google Earth and the Internet make it possible for you the see your business from a new perspective—for free!

What we’ve shown here is simple, but powerful and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. More advanced tools and techniques help you answer questions like:

• How long does it take for my customers to drive to my store (site selection)?
• What neighborhoods should I send my direct mail campaign to (marketing)?
• What is the most efficient way to divide up our market into sales territories (sales)?
• Where are the properties that meet my buyer’s criteria (real estate)?
• What’s the most efficient routing for my delivery trucks today (delivery)?

Now that you’ve seen your business on the map…

What did you learn?

How will you use it to improve your business?

Please post your ideas for using maps in your organizations decisions in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!