Reaching your Target Market

By Nigel Wilkinson, MD. WNW DEsign Ltd.

So if you have read yesterdays posting you have decided your web strategy and decided what the website is going to do for your business.  The next thing to address is who your customers are and what will appeal to them.  Some prospective clients I visit know exactly who their customers are and where they come from.  Far too many have no real idea of their customer base, more importantly they have no plan as to who they want to attract.

 
Creating a clear picture of your desired customer allows you to design your website, and indeed all other marketing, to appeal to your preferred customers.  It maybe that the clients you want are not what you are currently getting, resulting in a mismatch of services, stress for your business and lost sales.  Take note of the 80:20 rule, where 20% of your customers create 80% of your profit.  Alternatively a different 20% create 80% of your problems.  Focusing on the top 20% drives the business forward and creates profit.

 
These ideal clients are sometimes called “Your Golden Eagles.”  By being clear who your Golden Eagles are you can design your website to appeal to these people and just as importantly to reject customers that you would prefer not to deal with.  For example if you provide a service to domestic customers a photograph of a family home with children playing will appeal to a home market but not to a business customer.

 
Most business want to come over as professional but what other phrases would you use to describe your business?  Are you a family business, large corporate, cheap and cheerful or top quality?  Decide your image and create a website that reinforces this message.  If you are a large, professional business there is no point having a website that gives the impression of “man and van,” it would be better not to have a website at all. 

 
Also beware of presenting an image of a multi-national company when you are a sole trader working at home, be professional and present yourself as able to cope with customer needs but be honest with your customers.  Don’t get caught out after months of tendering and presenting and lose the business at the last minute. 

 
Present yourself to appeal to you Golden Eagles and watch your website and your business fly.  Trying to attract everyone and risk appealing to no-one.  For more on creating appealing designs, please email info@wnwdesign.co.uk

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.