Colorado Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service
While the primary focus of this blog is to help Denver small businesses market their services online - small business owners need to use all tools available to them - both online and offline. If you market your services directly to Denver businesses (as opposed to consumers) - you may wish to check out the Colorado Secretary of State's Weekly Reporting Service. It costs $200 for a 12 month subscription. You'll get a weekly e-mail listing of all Colorado business filings that were entered into the Secretary of State's business database within the previous week. Information provided includes helpful information like:
- Business Name
- Registered Agent's Name and Address
- Type of Business
- Filing Date
- Business Formation Date
Notably missing from the data provided by the secretary of state are business phone numbers for the businesses listed. That said, there is still a treasure trove of information available to allow you to market to Denver Businesses.
It Helps to Be Technically Inclined
The reports are huge (usually 1,000+ Colorado business records each week), and it helps to be technically oriented to sift through the data to find what you need. You can import the data into excel each week and sort it. An even better option would be to import the data into a database where you can run queries to get the data you need.
Small Business Data You Can Use
Once you are able to sort for the data, you can find some particularly useful information. You can see the formation date of businesses - which will allow you to identify all of the brand new businesses that have just filed with the Colorado Secretary of State. You can also - if you're willing to work hard at it - derive what type of business you're looking at by the business name or the entity type. For instance, if you market your services to dentists, you can run a query to just return records that have "DDS" as part of the business name.
Helpful Links for the Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service:
How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
For a relatively small investment, you get access to all of the business filings. The nice thing about these lists when compared to the large, expensive business directories is that you know this data is current - never more than a week old. If your Denver small business services other businesses within the metro area - the Colorado Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service is worth a look.