Target Customers and Your Website

Not a lot of companies to a good job online at understanding and catering to their target customers.

“Target customers” is actually kind of a funny term as it makes it sound like you might be planning on shooting them. That said, everyone understands the term so we’ll keep using it.

Rather than explain the theory behind customer targeting and how it affects your website and marketing, it might be easier to just look at a practical example…

We’ve worked for some years with a company called WildPlay. They’re a multi-location outdoor adventure park, with things like Zip Lines and some amazing aerial obstacle courses through the treetops. Simply put, they are an exhilarating and empowering natural experience.

Let’s think about their target customer for a second. You might think that their target is anyone who likes outdoor adventures.

You’d be right but you’d also be wrong. Let’s have a look a bit deeper. Their market might include:

• Outdoors sports enthusiasts (hikers, climbers).
• Teenage thrill seekers.
• Local parents planning parties (they are a very popular birthday party location).
• Tourists visiting the cities their parks are in (huge in the summer).
• Corporate HR people looking to book off-site teambuilding activities.

So, while all of those potential targets might love the outdoors, they have dramatically different needs that you’re going to need to address on your site. A great example of different needs from these groups is that of local parents versus teenage thrill seekers. While the thrill seekers are going to be looking for maximum adrenaline, the parents are probably primarily concerned with the safety of the locations.

Obviously, you need to put some serious thought into how to address these different targets on your site.  There’s much more of a science to this than we have room to go into here, but if you’re interested in “doing it right” I’d suggest checking our Buyer Legends by the Eisenberg brothers. These guys are the real deal and I first met them when I took their web marketing course way back in 2003 at the Wizard Academy in Austin Texas.

In the next sessions we’ll look at prioritizing our target groups and setting up for “self segmentation.” Moving forwards, we’ll also look at how to write great copy for your targets and how to optimize your site for “conversion.”

Next Lesson Coming Shortly!>>