PROMOTIONS AND MORE

Cutting through the clutter takes more than interesting advertisements. To help you brainstorm about different promotional ideas, use these sources:
* Promo Magazine
Apply for a free subscription, or visit PromoMagazine.com
* About.com's promotional advertising web page.
* PromoPeddler.com's daily new promotion ideas are located here.

RESEARCH RESOURCES

Miscellaneous business resources:
Advertising Research Foundation
Business Researcher's Interests
CNN Money
Guerilla Marketing Online
Hoover's Online
Research-It!
Stat-USA
World Asvertising Research Center

Population and demographic information:
Census Bureau
Stat-USA

www.naco.org
The National Association of Counties website helps you find a listing of cities in each county and a listing of counties in each state.
NAVIGATE: From the homepage, select “About Counties” and then “Data and Demographics.” You can then do a city search. From “About Counties” you can also “Find a County” and search for counties by state.

http://www.melissadata.com/LookUps/
If you know the Zip code for the city, this will give you all surrounding zip codes with a specified radius, up to 5 miles. It also has lookups for zip code maps, demographics by zip code, lists of zips per county, etc.

http://zip.langenberg.com/
This site will give you provide you with the distance between two zip codes (miles and estimated drive times), provide listing of all zip codes within a specified radius and provide you with the zip codes included in a certain city and vice versa.

www.census.gov
This is the best source to find demographic information, and everything else that you would ever want to learn about your area. There are HUNDREDS of reports (data and maps) that you can pull on this site, and if you would like to learn more feel free to schedule a time with me and I will be happy to go over it with you!
NAVIGATE: The easiest way to find information quickly is by selecting “American Fact Finder” on the left side of the homepage. You can then type in the city, county, zip code, market, etc that you are looking for. Once the page uploads, it gives an overview of the information compiled for the area. You can also click on “Show More” if you need further detailed information like the social or economic characteristics of the area. These reports can be exported to excel or printed, or simply copied and pasted into a spreadsheet.

http://www.ersys.com/
This site compiles census and city information and puts it into maps and graphics which are easy to read and pull quick information from. Simply select the state and city you are researching and it will pull up dozens of search options.

www.chamberofcommerce.com
One great way to find out what’s going in a particular city is to look at the area’s local chamber of commerce. This site helps you search for a city’s local chamber, providing contact information and website links. Once on the local chamber’s website, look for community profiles, economic information, lists of major employers, etc. to find out how and where the city is growing.

Magazines:
Advertising Age
Adweek
American Demographics
Business Week
Forbes
Fortune
Media Life

HOW SOCIAL CLASS WORKS

This is an interactive page that will help you "label" your target audience as "upper class," "middle class" and so on. Click here.

MEDIA NEWS

TV Barn -- a web site that compiles stories about what is happening in the television industry. This site will offer tips on which shows are doing well and which are not. This could be helpful for you when you are choosing your media vehicles. http://www.tvbarn.com/