Whittaker SmartLeads Trends

By Leigh Howe

Our main research focus at Whittaker Associates continues to be predicting which companies are likely to relocate or expand by asking the question what causes companies to relocate and expand?  This helps our clients get the best bang for their marketing time and money.  With our research, our client can focus on those companies that are more likely to be in expansion mode and therefore respond more favorably to marketing efforts.

Change is the paramount indicator of probable location activity. Our key ingredient is the capacity for discovering corporate change (whether it’s about to happen, ongoing, or recently occurred). Whittaker Associates has developed an effective research method for identifying companies likely to be active in the near term. It is all about tracking the changes happening within companies or in their external environment, whether new executive announcements, mergers and acquisitions, new product development, or industry regulations.

SmartLeads Born. For several years now, we have been compiling a database of companies that are experiencing changes such as new key executives, significant growth, industry deregulations, etc.  Internally, we call that database “SmartLeads,” a name that was suggested by our partner and colleague, Steve Pope of Applied Marketing Sciences. Whittaker SmartLeads currently contains records on 18,500 companies and grows every day. We draw information from SmartLeads, as well as external research sources, when we compile targeted company lists for our clients. 

Activity.  Of the 18,500 records in SmartLeads, only 3,541 have been sent to more than one client over the past two years.  Our clients find it valuable to have information that is not widely known.  About three quarters of the records have real estate contacts and over 90% have websites that have been verified.  New information we have begun collecting recently includes email addresses, location information, and company expansion history. 

We thought you might enjoy seeing what the most active industries and the most active states have been in our research and among our clients.

Most Requested Whittaker SmartLeads by Industry.  The breakdown by 3-digit SIC code looks like this (top 15 SIC codes):

Most Requested Whittaker SmartLeads by State.  The breakdown by state looks like this (top 15 states):

1. California
2. Illinois
3. Ohio
4. Michigan
5. New York
6. Pennsylvania
7. New Jersey
8. Massachusetts
9. Georgia

10.  Minnesota

11.  Texas

12.  Wisconsin

13.  North Carolina

14.  Indiana

15.  Missouri