I was interviewing a new client recently and was running through
the usual qualifying questions with him - the first of which was: "Can you tell me which market your products are targeting?" His
response startled me. He said: "well that's easy, it's the
Internet!" I paused, not quite sure, how to break the news to
him.
I'm sure he was thinking: Wow, this guy is really lame, I offer
Internet services, who did he think my market would be?
And I was thinking: No wonder he's got no traffic to his site
and he's spending $200 a day on Adwords advertising and getting
no conversions.
The problem is that his view mirrors that of many businesses -
that the Internet, all by itself, is a market and all that it
takes to tap it is to be present in it.
But The Internet is NOT a Market
The Internet is no more a market than a post office or television
channel is. Like those, it's a medium - it is a means of
reaching a market. Potential buyers can reach through the
Internet to find your products or services or you can reach
through the Internet to find them. But just being on the Internet
- having a website, for example - is no guarantee that you are
present to your potential market. In fact, only posting a website
is a bit like holding up a sign in the middle of Grand Central
Station in New York City hoping somebody will stop and order from
you.
Finding Your Market On The Internet
So if you're on the Internet, how do you reach into that
amorphous mass of would-be buyers to find your market? It's not
as hard as you think. There are several reliable ways to do just
that:
Use targeted outbound marketing to drive traffic to you site.
Direct marketing is more targeted than posting a website. Use
direct mail or direct email to drive traffic to your site. Using
banners in market-specific e-newsletters is also a good way to
get market-specific traffic.
Use search engines optimization efforts focused on
market-specific keyword to narrow the traffic to your website
more to those in your marketplace.
Create carefully constructed keyword search engine PPC
marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your site.
Ensure that your site is listed in market-specific directory
sites to pre-screen traffic to your site.
Use partner and affiliate links to push pre-qualified traffic
to your site.
Article marketing - using market-specific content with
backlinks to your site is an excellent way to drive relevant and
qualified traffic to your site.
A Few Precautions...
Whatever form of market targeting you use make sure they include
strong and market-specific offers. A weak offer or an offer with
too-generalized appeal defeats your purpose. Also, in whatever
you do, it's always a good idea to construct a few test offers
or test campaigns first.
Why Target Anyway?
Some businesses do get away with generalized marketing or poorly
targeted Internet campaigns - for a while. They might get the "low-hanging fruit" but it never works in the long run. First,
generalized marketing is only a symptom that the business does
not really know who its market is. This means that the business
will have more than selling problems to hamper their growth.
Second, generalized campaigns will always prove to be more
expensive than targeted campaigns and will always result in a
worse ROI than market-targeted campaigns.
Get Serious
Using the Internet as a medium for your market and means of
boosting your sales offers many benefits. But if you are going to
use the Internet as a marketing vehicle, get serious about it -
make sure you don't lose your market focus by throwing offices
to the general Internet visitor. Invest in going all the way with
it - carefully target everything you do on the Internet - it's
not expense and it will pay off big.
Kurt D. Lynn offers business consulting services
to growing businesses in the U.S. and Canada. For more
information or more articles, check out his blog at http://www.KlynnBusinessConsulting.com/blog.
