Thread by @NeelBParekh

One early question anyone interested in starting a local business should ask is

“What are my odds of leading the market & how hard will it be?”

There’s a simple 4 step process you can follow to answer that question & decide whether you’ve got a good opportunity on your hands 🧵

1️⃣When you’re talking about “the market” what size market are you talking about?

LA has a pop. of ~4M, NYC ~8M, CHI ~3M. These are “Tier 1” cities & are going to have established and maybe even cutthroat competition.

This is a tough hill to climb, but not an impossible one. 👇

2️⃣Cities like San Antonio (1.5M), Dallas (1.3M), and Austin (~1M) are also likely to have some established competition, but nowhere near like what you’ll see in Tier 1.

I call these “Tier 2” cities and there’s definitely opportunity here. 👇

3️⃣The “Tier 3” cities are developing marketplaces. They are not “small towns” but because they aren’t playing in the same leagues as Tiers 1 and 2, there’s no comparison when it comes to quality and quantity of competition. 👇

4️⃣These are cities like Nashville (~700k), Kansas City (~500k), and Saint Louis (~300k). KC and StL also are surrounded by suburbs that could be part of a service area, getting you to 2M and 3M respectively. 👇

5️⃣We have MaidThis franchises in all three tiers I’ve mentioned above. That’s because we did the research to find out if the opportunity was a good match for the time and resources of the entrepreneur.

That research starts on Google. 👇

6️⃣Google “plumber San Antonio” or “locksmith Nashville” & you’re going to get the Map Pack, which lists all businesses on a map that match for relevant keywords, ranked in order of popularity & reviews.
Congrats, you now have a list of the top 3 service providers in the area. 👇

Pro tip: The companies who have highest reviews + highest rankings will get the lion’s share of clicks. If 10 companies have 500+ reviews in my direct niche, I know it may take a long time to outrank. 👇

7️⃣Go to three spots to see how well-positioned the brands are:

Google My Business profiles (how many reviews and how recent)
Websites (SEO optimized? Easy to use?)
Directories (are they listed on places like HomeAdvisor or Angi?) 👇

Pro tip: do the top ranked competitors on organic SEO for my keywords have good websites, or shitty websites? Do they have a clear call to action, online booking, etc?

Sometimes very un-optimized websites are the top spots. This tells me it’s ripe for takeover. 👇

Another Pro tip: I’ve said before that in service businesses, picking up the 📞 is a competitive advantage: call and see if people are actually answering the phone. That’s another way to get a good read on the competition. 👇

Another Pro tip: PAID ADS: Google LSA (look it up) is still relatively new and underutilized. If this exists in that market and is not being use properly by competitors, this is a HUGE opportunity. Volume of reviews + bid amount are the biggest drivers of LSA rankings. 👇

8️⃣With these steps in hand, all you need to do is set aside some time. You don’t need any expensive or proprietary software: just some elbow grease and the willingness to do the work.
There’s also the excitement of opportunities when they start staring you in the face 👇

If you’re enjoying these tips and want to hear me go into it in more detail on a podcast episode check out this link

anchor.fm/remotelocal/ep…

Speaking of tips, I’ve committed to writing a thread every weekday for a month on Twitter.

Follow me for more threads like this @NeelBParekh