“Leveraging Placer’s true trade area and audience segment insights helped us validate possible sites in our new site selection process, helping us feel comfortable that the new clinics will grow our market share without cannibalizing the customer base at our existing clinics.”
-- Director of Business Operations
The Challenge
ABA Therapy provider plans network expansion in Atlanta, seeks two new sites
A fast-growing provider of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy helps children with autism and operates several clinics across a major metro. Looking to expand their network of clinics, the leadership team wanted to ensure that two potential sites could attract new clients without cannibalizing the customer base of its existing clinics. Previously reliant on manually gathering data from various sources, the team sought a more efficient and precise solution. How could they get the data insights needed to validate the proposed expansion sites and successfully add two new clinics?
The Solution
Placer traffic pins reveals True Trade Area and relevant market segments at selected sites
Potential Clinic Location #1
The first potential site sat near two successful clinics the therapy provider already operated in Atlanta. A traditional ring-radius assessment suggested that cannibalization was likely with the two existing clinics, leading to concerns about site feasibility.
Potential Clinic Location #2
The second potential site also sat near two other existing clinics. Unlike the first site, however, the second proposed site was intentionally located near an existing clinic that had reached overcapacity and was intended to help absorb excess demand, without taking customers from the second clinic nearby.
Needing a correct understanding of each site’s potential, the team skipped the traditional ring radius approach and created Traffic Pins to discover each site’s true trade area and potential audience segments.
This approach proved prescient, as Placer’s data showed that the first new clinic location’s trade area did not go as far south as a ring-radius approach would suggest; instead, the trade area spread mostly northwards and did not overlap with the trade areas of the nearby existing clinics, minimizing cannibalization risk and assuaging the team’s concerns.
Learn more about Traffic Pins
Learn more about Audience Profile
The second new clinic location exhibited some trade area overlap with the existing high demand clinic (as intended), but otherwise possessed a distinct trade area from another nearby existing clinic - a great sign.
The team also used Placer to assess factors such as census counts of family households in the area, predominant Experian Mosaic family segments, and projected growth rates around each of the new clinic locations. The analysis revealed a strong concentration of similar audience segments at the new and existing clinic locations, aligning perfectly with the therapy provider’s target clientele. Both new clinic locations also were projected to see an above average increase in population of children over the next 5 years. Together, these favorable factors gave the leadership team confidence to invest in building out the two new clinics.
The Outcome
SUCCESS: Therapy provider confidently expands network with two new clinics
Placer.ai gave the leadership team the confidence to expand their network of clinics and open two new clinics in the Atlanta metro, ensuring optimal market coverage while minimizing internal competition. The team continues to explore additional expansion locations using Placer data.
