More Potential Canadian Customers! Demographic Profiling

The Canadian population is now above 33 million people. Think about it: more people = more potential customers!

Click here to see the December 19, 2007 population estimates release from Statistics Canada. This release details which provinces showed the most and least growth due to births over deaths, immigration and interprovincial migration.

Demographic Profiling

That's great, you say, but how can someone build a business based on other demographic information? Do you want to find out who lives where: adults, teenagers, children, male/female? How can you find out the languages that are spoken in a particular community? How can you slice and dice the available demographic data to target a specific audience for your business' products and services?

Statistics Canada is always a good place to start and 2006 census data is now in the midst of being released, much of it for free. To quickly create a demographic profile of a community, go to:

1. Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/ and select either English or French.
2. Click on the "Community Profiles" link, type in the desired place name with the appropriate province and click on the Search button.
3. Click on the match to your place name and the next page that appears in the "All Data" default. This provides details of your place name with male/female data compared to its corresponding provincial data: population and dwelling counts, age characteristics, marital status, dwelling data, family and household characteristics, language, immigrant and citizenship status, generation status and mobility status.

Demographics at the Postal Code Level!

Should you require more specific data, say to a particular postal code level, you can use Census Tract profiles. Using census tracts, you can target customers in specific geographic areas with populations from 2500 to 8000 people. There are three different ways to get to these small slices of demographic data, one being using postal codes. Click here to do this.

Language Data

Statistics Canada census data is released over time so check the releases periodically; some data is free and some is not. Some of the language data was released on December 4, 2007, much of it free and containing some excellent detailed data. Click here for access to this data.

By viewing/downloading a particular table (click on the numbered product), you can view such things as language knowledge by the population in a specific city. To do this:

1. Click on one of the catalogue product numbers i.e. Cat. No. 97-555-X2006016
2. Click on the "View/download this product" button
3. Click on the "Geographic index" link
4. Scroll down the page and click on your target geographic area's name
5. View or print the page or download the data in various formats (i.e. comma-delimited to use with Excel)

As an example, click here to show language knowledge in Oakville, Ontario.