Marketing for downtown Denver: the CBD, Union Station and the Tech Center area

Marketing Company Denver is an independent referral service, not a marketing agency. When you send the form, your details go to an independent marketing agency that prepares any proposal and does any work.

Downtown on the city’s own map

Denver’s map divides the city into 78 statistical neighborhoods. Two of them make up the heart of downtown. The Central Business District, listed as CBD, borders Union Station, Auraria, Civic Center, Five Points and North Capitol Hill. Union Station is a neighborhood of its own, bordering the CBD, Auraria, Five Points and Highland. By area they are among the smallest of the 78 on the City’s map, together with their neighbors Civic Center and North Capitol Hill.

Small neighborhoods with many businesses mean many competitors close together. When Google weighs distance in local results, a downtown customer may be within a few blocks of a dozen businesses that do what you do. Distance alone will not set you apart; relevance and popularity have to.

Google listings in office buildings

Many downtown businesses sit on an upper floor of a shared building. That is fine for Google, provided the profile follows the rules:

• One profile per location. Google says “Do not create more than one page for each location of your business.” A firm with one downtown office has one profile.
• Your real name only. Not “Downtown Denver Law Office” unless that is the name on your door and your letterhead.
• No virtual offices. Google says a service-area business “can’t list a ‘virtual’ office unless that office is staffed during business hours.” A mail drop or a desk you never use is not a location.
• Address and service area, both. If clients visit you and you also visit them, Google lets you “Enter both your address and service area.” Keep the real address.

Ads drawn around downtown

Google Ads can target a city or a radius around a point. For a downtown business that mostly serves people who work or live nearby, a tight radius can make more sense than the whole city. Google’s broad option, “Presence or Interest”, also reaches people showing interest in an area, such as someone in another state planning a trip to Denver. A downtown hotel bar might want that; a downtown dry cleaner probably does not. A good agency asks which you are before it sets the targeting.

The Denver Tech Center area

Some businesses that think of themselves as Denver businesses are based in or near the Denver Tech Center. The Tech Center area lies partly outside the City and County of Denver, so it is worth being precise about where you are and where you serve. A profile and an ad area that say “Denver” when your customers are mostly in the cities around the Tech Center describe the business badly. Describe the area you actually serve.

The same care applies to pages on your website. If you serve both downtown and the Tech Center area, a page for each can work, as long as each carries real content about working there. Google’s spam policies treat many near-identical pages “targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” as doorway abuse.

What a downtown marketing plan should cover

1. A Google Business Profile that follows the guidelines, with the building address and any service area you cover.
2. A website page that says plainly where you are downtown and how to find you.
3. Ads aimed at the area your customers are actually in.
4. Honest reviews from customers, asked for without any incentive.
5. Separate, real pages for the CBD and the Tech Center area only if you work in both.

For more on the map, see local SEO in Denver; for ads, the advertising agency in Denver page.

Questions people ask