"Should we open in this city?" is a decision worth a lot of money, and most clients make it on instinct and a LinkedIn skim. A market-entry talent map replaces the instinct with an answer: is the talent there, what does it cost, and who's already competing for it. It's one of the easiest mapping briefs to sell, because the question is concrete and the cost of getting it wrong — a new office that can't hire — is obvious to everyone in the room.
What does a market-entry talent map answer?
Four questions, and a good map answers all of them:
- Does the talent exist in the location, at the seniority and volume the client needs?
- What does it cost there, compared with where they operate today?
- Who's already there — which employers hold the talent, and which specific people matter?
- How hard will hiring be — is the market deep and movable, or thin and locked up?
Scoping the map
The defining move is that you hold the role or function constant and vary the location. That keeps the comparison clean: the same target profile, mapped across each city the client is considering, so the differences in availability, cost and competition are like-for-like.
Decide depth up front — availability only, or salary benchmarks and named profiles too — because that sets the fee and the timeline. The underlying research discipline is the same as any sector map; the method is in how to market map a sector.
What to deliver
A market-entry map earns its fee by being a decision document, not a spreadsheet. At minimum:
- A location-by-location comparison of talent availability for the target profile.
- A salary and cost benchmark for each market.
- A named view of key employers and reachable people.
- A clear recommendation — which location best fits the client's need, and why.
For the deliverable format and how to present it so it reads as worth the fee, see what goes in a market map.
Pricing and positioning
Price it as a strategic project, not a recruitment service — the budget comes from expansion planning, not a headcount line. A fixed project fee, scaled to the number of locations and depth of data, is the right shape. And position the follow-through: once the client picks a location, you're the obvious agency to run the hiring there, because you already mapped it. Market entry is one of three strategic briefs clients commission without a live vacancy — the others being competitor mapping and succession mapping.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a market-entry map need to answer?
- Three things: does the talent exist in the location at the volume the client needs, what does it cost there, and who are the specific people and employers already in that market. A good market-entry map turns a gut-feel expansion decision into one backed by named profiles and real pay data.
- Who buys a market-entry map?
- Usually a leadership or strategy team weighing a new office, a market expansion, or a build-versus-buy decision. The budget is strategic, not a recruitment fee, because the map informs a decision that sits above any single hire.
- How is it different from a normal sector map?
- The boundary is geographic as much as functional. You hold a role or function constant and compare it across locations — availability, cost and competition — rather than mapping a single market end to end.
Written by
Joshua Aubrey · Founder, TalentMaps