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Market Reach ​

Market Reach draws the area a business can really serve, based on how far people will drive, and puts the population inside it next to your grid rankings.

A radius circle is a guess. Ten miles across a city is not ten miles across a mountain pass. Market Reach uses road travel time instead, so the zones follow the roads, and then adds who lives inside each zone. You can see where the customers are, and how visible the business is to them.

Where it lives ​

  • Profile detail → Rank Grid tab. The reach zones draw on the same map as the grid scan, underneath the rank dots, with a table of the demographics beside it.
  • Client reports. Add the Market Reach section in the report builder and the zones, the demographics, and a visibility score go into the report. See Reports.

Market Reach is available to every organization in the US and Canada. Viewing reach zones needs the same permission as viewing a profile. Generating or refreshing them needs the Edit profile settings permission, which owners, admins, and members have by default.

What the zones are ​

Market Reach draws three drive-time zones around the business:

ZoneDrive timeWhat it means
PrimaryUp to 7 minutesThe area a customer reaches without thinking about it. Where most of the revenue should come from.
Secondary7 to 15 minutesReachable with a reason. A good specialist, a good review, a referral.
Fringe15 to 25 minutesThe edge of the market. Customers here have closer options and need a strong reason to choose this business.

The zones are exclusive. The Secondary zone does not include the Primary area, and the Fringe does not include either of the inner two. So the population figures for each zone can be added together, and a customer is only ever counted in one zone.

The map legend reads Estimated drive-time reach. That wording is deliberate. The zones are a model of how far people can drive in that time, calculated from the road network. They are not a record of where the business's customers actually came from. Google retired the part of its API that reported where direction requests came from, so that data is no longer available to any tool. Market Reach models the market instead of pretending to observe it.

What the demographics show ​

Beside the map, one row per zone:

  • Population
  • Households
  • Median household income

The figures come from the census areas that overlap each zone. Where a census area straddles a zone boundary, the platform counts the share that falls inside the zone, not the whole area. A ~ beside a median income means it was approximated from area medians because the income brackets were not available for that region.

Data sources are shown under the table, with the census vintage.

Coverage by country ​

CountryZonesDemographics
United StatesAll locationsAll locations. US Census ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, American Community Survey.
CanadaAll locationsThe Okanagan region of British Columbia only, for now (Statistics Canada Forward Sortation Areas, Census 2021). Other Canadian locations get the zones with no population figures.

If a profile is outside the US and Canada, the Rank Grid tab says so and no zones are offered.

Generating the zones ​

  1. Open the profile and go to the Rank Grid tab.
  2. Above the map, click Generate reach zones.
  3. The zones draw on the map in a few seconds. Turn the Estimated drive-time reach switch off and on to hide or show them.

The zones are anchored to an origin:

  • Storefront businesses. The origin is the business's Google address, and the map shows a pin there.
  • Service-area businesses. The address is hidden on Google, so the platform does not use it. The origin is the centre of the profile's grid scan campaign, or of its latest grid scan if there is no campaign, and the map never shows a pin. If the profile has no grid scan yet, the tab asks you to run one first. See Local Grid Rank Tracking.

Zones are generated once and stored. Opening the tab again does not regenerate them. Click Refresh reach to run them again, for example after the business moves or after you re-centre a grid campaign.

If the drive-time provider is busy, the tab says so and keeps showing the last result, with a showing last result chip on the panel. Try again in a few minutes.

Reading the zones against the grid ​

On the Rank Grid tab the rank dots stay on top of the zones, so you can read them together:

  • Red dots inside the Primary zone. The business is losing where the money is. This is the finding that matters.
  • Green dots in the Fringe, red in the Primary. Visibility is strong where customers are unlikely to come from, and weak where they are. Common for businesses that picked a wide grid to look good.
  • Green across the Primary and Secondary. The business is visible to the people who can actually reach it.

In a client report, the Market Reach section turns this into a visibility score from 0 to 100, weighted so the Primary zone counts most, with a per-zone breakdown under it. A high score with a low Fringe number is fine. A low Primary number is the problem to fix.

In client reports ​

Add the Market Reach section in the report builder. The report shows:

  • The zones drawn on a map
  • The visibility score and the per-zone breakdown
  • The population, households, and median income per zone

Reports read the stored zones. They never generate zones on their own. If a profile has no zones yet, the section is left out of that profile's report. Generate the zones on the Rank Grid tab first.

For a service-area business, the report map never shows an origin pin. The zones are drawn, the hidden address is not.

Limits ​

  • US and Canada only.
  • Canadian demographics are limited to the Okanagan region of British Columbia. Zones still draw everywhere.
  • The zones are estimates. Travel time is calculated for driving on the road network at normal conditions. They do not account for traffic, seasons, or the fact that a customer might come from the next town over for a specialist.
  • A profile needs an origin. A storefront address on Google, or a grid scan.
  • The drive-time provider has a shared daily limit across the platform. Generation is cached so this rarely matters, but on a heavy day a refresh can be asked to wait.