We all like to discuss real estate and flick through the weekend paper to see what the latest and greatest properties are on the market. When it comes to your personal life you probably put a lot of thought into where you buy/rent and live from considering proximity to shops, work and friends to things like parking availability and wifi speeds. This precision and care needs to translate to your business.

Location is one of the most important things to consider when starting up a new venture or small business. For businesses that require high customer engagement location is crucial to attracting new clients, managing operations with suppliers and even staying ahead of competition.

Having a local presence by the way of a local address and a fixed (local) landline is still regarded among customers as highly important. Research conducted by Servcorp found that 63 percent of consumers would not consider doing business with a supplier that did not have a local presence.

Prospective customers are six times more likely to contact businesses that display both a mobile number and a fixed (local) landline compared to all other common alternatives combined. In further research, Servcorp found that consumers also had the same preference with addresses. Businesses with a CBD address are 20 times more likely to be contacted by customers than those with regional or suburban address options.

Small businesses that cluster in a central location bring extraordinary amounts of growth to local places and create a highly focused market. Businesses that fail to recognise the importance of the cluster effect and placing their business in a centralised hub are limiting more than half of their addressable market.

Servcorp found that a businesses proximity to its addressable market, which is more often than not metropolitan and city areas are most crucial in lower density populations. For the Northern Territory, 83 percent of people agree location is a large deciding factor into doing business, and in Hobart 73 percent agree.

Looking at the supply side of things, businesses that buy and sell products need to access their target market and place their shop front or office in a location that can be easily reached by public transport. City locations offer the best location in terms of transport accessibility and location awareness. Servcorp confirms that that prospective customers give strong support for suppliers having a recognisable CBD address with 82 percent of people stating they do not want to contact a business that does not have a recognisable CBD address displayed on their website and marketing collateral.

This content is powered by our partners at Servcorp. Together with Roy Morgan Research they put together this white paper on First Impressions and what Small Business Owners can implement within their companies to ensure that they are always giving a good one.