30 Sep Geelong Is Growing. Has Your Marketing Kept Up?
Greater Geelong’s population reached 295,052 at 30 June 2025, and the council’s own forecast puts it at 441,984 by 2046, close to 150,000 additional residents inside about two decades. The three designated growth areas, Armstrong Creek plus the Northern and Western Geelong corridors, are planned to absorb around 175,000 of them across 5,367 hectares the council describes as the largest urban growth project in regional Victoria.
More telling than the headcount is what’s happening underneath it. The region now supports around 147,230 local jobs, growing at 4.3% a year over the past five years, roughly twice the rate the population is growing. Gross regional product has reached $21.5 billion, expanding at 3.9% a year, the fourth-fastest result among Australia’s large regional and capital cities. Around 23,560 businesses now operate across Greater Geelong.
That’s genuinely good news for the region, and for the potential customer base of almost every local business. It is not automatically good news for your marketing. An economy growing faster than its population means more businesses, with more revenue, competing for the same attention. Most of them are spending more to win it than they were five years ago.
A lot of Geelong businesses are still running the website, the social strategy and the general approach they set up five or ten years ago, when there was less noise to cut through. Here’s what’s worth revisiting as the market around you changes.
Your branding might be showing its age
A logo or brand look that felt current a decade ago can start to feel dated quickly, particularly as newer businesses enter the market with branding built for how people actually browse now: small screens, fast scrolling, and a mark that has to work at the size of a profile picture.
This doesn’t mean a full rebrand is necessary. It does mean it’s worth an honest look at whether your branding still reflects the business you are now, rather than the one you were when it was designed.
Your website is doing more work than it used to
As competition increases, your website stops being an online brochure and starts being the thing that decides whether someone chooses you or the business next door. Slow load times, dated design, or a site that’s awkward on a phone are no longer minor irritations. They’re the reason someone returns to the search results and clicks the next listing.
With more options available, people don’t wait around for a clunky website.
Local search has become more competitive
Five years ago, ranking for a local search term in Geelong often took minimal effort, simply because fewer businesses were actively competing for it. With more than 23,000 businesses now operating across Greater Geelong, that’s changed. More of them are investing in SEO and Google Business Profile optimisation than ever, and search itself is shifting. AI summaries and answer engines increasingly resolve a query before anyone reaches a website at all.
The practical effect is that standing still now means losing ground, even if nothing about your own SEO has changed. Holding a position now takes active work that it didn’t used to.
A “Geelong” targeting radius isn’t specific enough anymore
As the population spreads into Armstrong Creek, Charlemont, Mount Duneed, Lara and the new northern and western corridors, a broad “Geelong” radius on paid campaigns gets less efficient every year. A customer in Armstrong Creek and a customer in Lara are around 30 kilometres apart, with different travel patterns and often different reasons to choose you.
It’s worth revisiting who you’re actually trying to reach, and whether your targeting still reflects where your customers are rather than where they used to be.
The upside is real
None of this is a reason for pessimism. A growing population means a growing customer base: more households establishing themselves, more demand across nearly every local industry, and more people who have just moved to the area and hold no existing loyalty to a competitor.
That last point is easy to overlook. People new to a region are choosing suppliers for the first time: a dentist, a mechanic, a physio, a builder. Those decisions are largely made through search, and the businesses visible at that moment pick up customers who often stay for years.
Where to start
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start with an honest audit of where things stand. Does your website still hold up against the newer competitors in your category? Is your local SEO keeping pace, and does your Google Business Profile reflect your current services and reviews? Is your paid targeting still pointed at the right suburbs?
From there, prioritise the one or two areas most likely to be costing you opportunities right now. For most businesses that’s the website or local search, in that order.
If you’d like a hand working out where the gaps are, get in touch with our team or book a discovery call. We’ll give you an honest read on where your marketing currently stands and which one or two things are worth fixing first. You can also have a look at our approach to strategy development and SEO.
Common questions
How fast is Geelong actually growing?
Greater Geelong’s population was 295,052 at 30 June 2025 and is forecast to reach 441,984 by 2046, an increase of roughly 147,000 people, or close to 50%, in just over two decades. The local economy is growing faster still: jobs have risen at 4.3% a year and gross regional product at 3.9%, both roughly double the rate of population growth.
How many businesses are there in Geelong?
Around 23,560 businesses operate across Greater Geelong as at June 2025, supporting roughly 147,230 local jobs and $21.5 billion in gross regional product.
Does population growth make marketing easier or harder?
Both. The customer base grows, but so does the number of businesses competing for it, and newer entrants typically arrive with current websites and active SEO. Growth tends to reward businesses that keep their marketing current, and it’s less forgiving of those that don’t.
What should a Geelong business review first?
The website, then local search. The website decides whether interest converts; local search decides whether you’re found at all. Branding and paid targeting matter, but they amplify a site and a search presence that already work.