Reaching Your Target Audience - Part 2

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Reaching Your Target Audience - Part 2

By admin | August 25, 2007

One of the most important aspects in your network marketing business or online business is identifying and reaching your target audience. The final part of this “mini-course” discusses just that…

Personalizing Your Website
Even if you’re not selling a product or service that is for a specific target audience you need to have a website that is personalized. For example, even though Amazon sells products that appeal to all target audiences they have still managed to create a personalized website that fits every customer. This is the goal of personalization technology.

Try to limit the number of products or services that you’re offering to your customers. “Information overload” is one of the biggest problems on the Internet. If you give your customers too many choices they’ll have a hard time making a decision. The key to avoiding information overload is organization as well as making sure that products and services are directed towards your customers.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that online marketing stop when you generate a sale. Your current customers are the ideal way for you to reach new customers. You want to get leads from your customers by using marketing concepts such as “tell a friend” e-mails.

One mistake that many small online businesses make is to focus only on self-promotion. The bottom line is that customers don’t care about you. They only care about what it is that you’re selling and what you can do for them. When someone visits your website you have about ten seconds to get their attention before they move on to the next website. That means that you have ten seconds to tell this person why it is that they need you. The home page of your website should tell people why your service or product is just right for them. Your home page should include information about your company and/or have a personal bio about who you are.

If you’re not sure about whether your website is reaching the right people, ask them. If you provide something of value to people who visit your website they’ll give you information. Things of value include contests, coupons, and free products. Make sure that you let them know they can trust you by including a privacy policy on your website that states you won’t share any personal information they provide with anyone else. Stick to your policy and never sell the information your customers provide you with. Otherwise you’ll lose and abuse their trust.

Once you know the demographics of your customers you’ll know how to spend your marketing budget. You can focus your online promotions using targeted marketing strategy. Even though you may end up with fewer people visiting your website, targeted online marketing is the way to go.

Using Banner Ads

One mistake that many online businesses make is using banner ads to reach the greatest amount of people. Your focus when it comes to banner ads is to reach the right type of people for the product or service that you’re selling. One thing to keep in mind is that, if you have a limited budget, you should avoid buying banner ads altogether. If you have a big budget, banner ads can be great for branding your company. You’ll be able to negotiate contracts that are long term with affiliated websites in your area of business. However, the results of click-through marketing are usually low and this makes banner ads the least cost effective of all online marketing techniques.

If you decide that you want to purchase banner ads you should focus on buying them on web pages that are very targeted. Ads are cheaper the more targeted a web page is. And the cheaper the ad the more cost effective your banner ads will be.

Another way that you can target the placement of your banner ads is to embed them in web page content. Before you purchase a banner ad find out what content the website administrators will be including on their web page that may be related to your online business. If the website uses a keyword search tool ask that your banner ads appear when key words that are linked to your product or service are typed into the search engine by visitors to the website.

Try to place your banner ads on a web page that is as deep into the website as possible. This way you’ll be reaching people who are truly looking for information that relates to your business. This is a great strategy to use if you want to get the most value for your online budget. Again, if your budget for marketing is quite high, you’ll want to buy banner ads on the home pages of websites so that your brand reaches a lot of people.

Keywords
One of the most cost effective ways to use your online marketing budget is to buy keywords. You can find out the price of keywords that are specific to your industry at www.Overture.com. You want your keywords to be as targeted and specific as possible. Always remember the goal of your business and buy keywords that encourage people to visit your website. Keywords that are general will cost you more and at the same time will attract fewer customers to your website. Before you start buying keywords you need to look at the content of your website. You want to buy keywords that are effective for your business content and that keep people coming back to your website.

So there you have it. Some useful tips I hope to help promote your network marketing business or other online business. Until next time…