You have a great product or service for sale - but do you know exactly who you're trying to sell it to?
Too many business owners take a shotgun approach to designing their web site - and although they think it will appeal to everybody... in fact it appeals to nobody.
That's because different types of customers are swayed by different types of sales pitches. And you need to market your product or service accordingly.
For instance:
If you're selling baby strollers, don't market to retired male golfing addicts.
If you're selling $3,000 formal business portraits, don't market to stay-at-home moms.
If you're selling naughty lingerie, don't market to the Bible Belt.
To give a more personal illustration: let's say that you're searching the Internet for a photographer to take a formal portrait of you and your family.
Are you going to hire somebody who specializes in photographing horses?
Or infants?
Or weddings?
Of course not. You're going to hire a photographer who specializes in taking formal family portraits.
Keep this in mind when developing your own web site. People are usually going to come to your site looking for something very specific. So you have to appeal directly to their specific tastes.
And this is much easier to do if you know exactly the kind of customer you're trying to target.
If you're still not clear who your idea customer is, take a minute and ask yourself a few basic questions about the type of person you would most like to do business with:
1. Are they male or female?
2. How old are they?
3. How much money do they make?
4. Do they have kids? What about pets?
5. What are some of their favorite hobbies?
6. What nagging problems keep them up at night?
Visualize this person in your mind. Imagine them walking through your door, checkbook or credit card in hand.
Keep the image of this person in front of you until it's burned into your brain.
This image is vitally important to your business - because every single marketing decision you make from now on should be directed toward that ideal customer.
Now imagine you're the photographer we talked about earlier - and you've narrowed your business focus down (from hundreds of photographic areas to choose from) to two specialties: Newborn Babies and Engaged Customers.
In this case, you can easily identify two target audiences. Parents of newborns and newly-engaged couples.
But how do you structure your site so that it will appeal to both of these two very different groups?
The simple answer is: you don't.
Instead, you put together two separate web sites:
The newborn baby site will focus on the parents: it will have warm colors and lots of soft-lit pictures of adorable babies. And maybe even an audio of soft, relaxing music.
The engaged couples site will focus on the couples: it will have bolder, more romantic colors... and scores of pictures of very-much-in-love couples.
The bottom line is that you're much better off having 10 different sites - each one geared toward a different ideal customer - than having one site that's trying to sell 10 different things.
So I'll ask you again. Who is the ideal customer for your web site?
If you still don't have a clear idea in your head, sit down and figure it out before you spend one more day - or one more dollar - marketing your business.
