The term for some of you may conjure up images of university classrooms and painful modelling excercises. For others, the term might imply some kind if research to do with population, but most certainly nothing to do with your business plan.
What if I told you that demographics should form the basis of your ENTIRE business plan. That if you have not addressed the demographics of your plan that you are doomed to fail?
Before you think I’ve lost my marbles, or worse, before you start to freak out and start “Googling) the term Demographics, sit back and read the following. Demographics are no more than your customers. Most would call this market research, but I prefer the term Demographics because in my experience most people DO NOT do their market research properly (if they did-half of the businesses we see fail would never have been launched in the first place).
Demographics, to cite Wikipedia, “Demographics are current statistical characteristics of a population” and Demographic Trends ” Demographic trends describe the historical changes in demographics in a population over time (for example, the average age of a population may increase or decrease over time). Both distributions and trends of values within a demographic variable are of interest. Demographics are about the population of a region and the culture of the people there.”
So if we are to understand the WIKIPEDIA definition, Demographics provides us with information about a population and the culture of the people who live there.
This is a very powerful statement. Demographic trends not only give us insight into whether populations are increasing or decreasing, but they also tell you about the area.
Let’s go through an example. Years ago, I moved into a new subdivision. New subdivisions tend to draw young, newly married or co-habituating couples if housing prices are close to their actual market value. A couple of years later in the middle of the night, I could not find my infant son’s soother and so had to run to walmart to find a 0-6 month soother. When I got there, not only were there no soothers in that age range, but also no size 1 diapers. Talking to the sales associate, and she said, “we just can’t keep this stuff in stock” I have no idea what it is”. Fast forward a few years, and he was preparing to enter school, the local school was talking about the “boom” in enrollment and chalked it up to the excellent reputation of the school.
You probably get where I am going wiht this. The new couples who moved in had babies, those kids grew up and went to school. So why might this info be useful if you are opening a business? Well let’s say you want to open a neighbourhood daycare. It would be wise to know the age of your subdivision. Why? Because in starter neighbourhoods, couples tend to stay an average of 3-7 years in their first home. After that they may disperse. Newly married people will have their first child within 1-5 years (generally) so if you open in a neighbourhood where there are a lot of children or young married couples, you are assured constant business (as was the case with a neighbor). However, if you open your daycare in a more established neighbourhood, you will have to search further for clients and have a marketing strategy that makes up for the lack of proximate customers.
So how does one begin to navigate this minefield of information? Before we begin, I think it is important that we begin to understand the very nature of entrepreneurship and I will tell you about some entrepreneurs that I know and what entrepreneurship means to them.