Specify Your Target Audiences

Who do you want your business website to reach? Think about what will make your target audiences want to buy from you, and take some notes in a Word document you can refer to later.

Think about some of the ways your target audiences use the Internet and how they respond to various types of content:

• What types of websites do they like to visit every day?
• What’s the best way to communicate with your target audiences — words, audio, video, all of the above?
• Would your customers appreciate having the opportunity, right on your site, to discuss relevant topics and issues with you and others?

List Your Target Audiences

Make a tentative list of your primary target audiences. Start by combining some of these words, for example:

• male
• female
• urban
• suburban
• rural
• African-American
• Asian-American
• Latino / Latina
• homeowners
• new homeowners
• renters
• mothers
• fathers
• married couples
• single parents
• college students
• Lesbian / Gay / Bi / Trans
• activist / issue-oriented
• blue collar
• white collar
• low-income
• wealthy

This is not a complete list, of course, and specifying your target audiences will almost certainly call for additional categories.

Break down any categories that describe your primary or secondary target audiences into age groups — 19-34, 35-49, 50-69, 70+, or whatever.

Then, as appropriate, combine and add words to be more specific — urban 19- to 34-year-old Latina college students, new suburban homeowners, or incarcerated politicians, for example.

To take a specific example, if you’re selling baby products, new moms and dads are a primary target audience. Secondary target audiences might include grandparents and people who go to baby showers.

Think about these audiences and make your list increasingly more specific while you're developing your Internet marketing strategies — parents of newborns, parents of toddlers, etc.

Communicate with Your Target Audiences

You target an audience by speaking precisely and concisely to the people in that audience in ways they will understand. The text on your website should sound like something you would actually say in ordinary conversation.

Communication with your target audiences will be your fundamental task when you develop or evaluate the content of your business website. Assume that it’s just you and the individual person who visits your website, and speak to her as if she were right there in your office or store.

Think about the specific products and services each of these audiences could buy from you, and take some notes. Then think about what will make them want to buy from you rather than from your competitors.

Consider using the second person (“you”) when you’re explaining the benefits people will get from your products, from your services, and from doing business with you instead of with your competitors. If you’re selling skateboards to teenagers, speak to them. Communicating with some unspecified, generic audience won’t position you for success.

Finally, be sure to distinguish between your own personal preferences and what it will take to persuade your target audiences.

When you collaborate with others on this project, make sure that no one gets the impression that you are the target audience — sometimes a danger for those who work within a command-and-control culture.

Social Marketing to Your Target Audiences

Begin thinking about your long-term social marketing strategies, which involve:

• understanding your audiences (who do you want to reach?)
• understanding the websites and blogs that influence them.
• developing mutually beneficial reciprocal relationships with bloggers and others who influence your target audiences

Are You a Strictly Local Business?

If you're a local business, you may need to market your site as regionally-specific, zip-code-specific, and/or income-specific. If you’re an upscale neighborhood restaurant, for example, your target audience may be “people who live reasonably close to our restaurant and can afford to pay our prices at least once or twice a month.”

If your business serves a specific part of a larger metropolitan area, try to get a complete list of communities in your area. Decide which communities you want to target, then find out exactly which of your competitors in those communities are doing well on search engine results pages.