When choosing a base location for your company, New York City may not always be the first place a new small business would consider (if living outside the city). Mainly because the cost of rent or lease is substantially much higher in NYC than that of other cities.
If you’re an established business however, and you can afford to lease or rent in a city like Manhattan, it will only make sense that relocating to NYC would greatly benefit your business. If you’re only thinking about operation costs and not the return on investment, then you’re obviously missing the main points. So allow me to open your eyes a little…
Why we Relocated our Company to New York City
When we first started our SEO Company in Buffalo NY, our biggest challenge was getting enough clients to fuel our business. Although we did SEO for our local city, and we were easily ranking for many of our local keyword phrases in the search engines, the search volume for our type of service was just too low. As an investment, it didn’t make good sense to stay in a city where we barely broke even, never mind profiting.
We also tried PPC (pay per click ads), and paid a hefty price for local leads on sites like Thumbtack. But despite which, it was not enough because, at the end of the day, we were competing with multiple other companies that were targeting the same audience as we were. And the monthly search volume for SEO & web design in Buffalo was just not enough to go around. As you may have already guessed, Buffalo is a very small city.
So we started advertising outside our local area, and although that helped a little, a lot of potential clients turned us down simply because we weren’t located in their area. We had to try extra hard to close deals with leads outside of Buffalo. Even though SEO and web design is all digital services and can be done from anywhere, most business owners have a habit of only hiring nearby services. They just didn’t trust any company outside their town radius!
We finally came to the conclusion that we needed to relocate, URGENTLY! It was either relocate or stay as is and never grow as a business. We wanted to base our new location according the number of monthly searches for our target keywords. While I won’t spill the beans on which locations had the highest monthly search volume for SEO services, I will tell you that NYC along with a few other major cities were on the top of our list.
Oddly though, a couple other cities had double or even triple the searches for SEO related keywords than New York City did, but being that we were already in the State of New York, we decided to go with Manhattan. That way, we can continue to run operations in Buffalo to generate that seed money while at the same time re-positioning ourselves in New York as our headquarters.
The Results of Our New Location…
We didn’t expect instant results right away because we knew that it took us years of building our brand in Buffalo, and we had to recreate the branding process in New York. It had taken us about three months alone before we got fully settled in our new office suite on 5th Ave, but it was worth the time. Almost immediately after opening our doors and starting a new advertising campaign, we started making sales.
And, even though, our SEO competition in NYC was much higher in numbers and were more established than we were, it didn’t hurt to have competition due to consumer volume.
Although we are still adjusting in our new headquarters, we are projected to grow from here. The economy is just not as bad in New York City, and most small businesses here are already spending tons on advertising if they wish to stay ahead of their competitors.
This meant that we also had to charge more because ranking a site for an SEO NYC term was much more difficult than ranking a site in Buffalo. The competition is more fierce, aggressive and are spending top dollars to stay ahead. We readily re-evaluated our services and made many new improvements so that when a client hires us, we make sure they are getting superior services than anything our competitors can offer.
This was all made possible simply because there is a greater number of businesses here than the average city, and most of them are constantly looking for new ways to spend their advertising budget.
Why all this should matter to your Business?
Although I am talking about our company’s personal experience, all this should be relevant to any business.
Why? Because even though you may not be providing an online marketing service as we are, it all still came down to volume. In our case, it was internet search volume for our service, but in your case, it may be the nonstop commute volume on the streets of New York.
A more densely populated city means more opportunities for your business. While a small city with a very low population and slower commutes means that you have to try harder and spend more on advertising to get customers in the door.
At a business perspective, relocating here was the best choice we made, but if you want to know how it is to live in New York City, then check out this post on the 50 reasons why NYC is the greatest city in the world.
Conclusion
Relocating to New York City came with many surprises, challenges, and expenses, but it was a risk we made that not only made all the difference in our business, but it also allowed us to invest more in our company including hiring and training new SEO experts. At this point of the game, I personally believe that we are way ahead of any SEO company out there. The secrets, strategies and expertise that we developed from the ground up is unique and it works! All thanks to the revenue generated by relocating to NYC.