
Define Your Target Audience
To ensure your new website speaks directly to and empathises with your ideal client (which you’ll determine shortly), your content should be directed at 20 to 35% of your total site visitors – NOT 100% OF THEM.
Attempting to be a solution for everyone who visits your site is one of the greatest oversights amongst small business owners and DECREASES conversions. Here’s a simple rule of thumb; the broader your audience, the more diluted your message (or value proposition) becomes. As well as limiting your website results, you’ll rarely attract the type of client you enjoy working with and/or find the most rewarding.
They’re all your visitors. But they’re not all your prospects. You can’t write for all of them and expect your site to perform well. Instead, your content should address visitors who are most likely to:
1. Do what you want them to do (since they want/need what you’re offering)
2. Be pleased with the results of using your service(s)
3. Be open to talking about your service(s) and refer you to others
These ideal visitors become qualified traffic which, if converted, are more likely to stay with you and recommend your service(s).
On the other hand, people who won’t derive enough value to talk about your service(s) after using it are not your target audience. Of course, let them book or purchase if they want to however don’t work at acquiring them. It’s not worth it. They won’t see the value in what you provide and are unlikely to tell anyone about it.
Simply put, they’ll drain your energy and make you work your butt off for the sheer pleasure of serving them.
Conversely, once you get the message right for your ideal audience, you can buy Facebook/Google ads for that segment and enjoy a much better return on investment (ROI) on your advertising spend.
So Who is Your Target Audience?
ACTION:
If you have have an email list (from newsletters or other signups) you could always send them a short survey requesting info (set up for free via surveymonkey). Ask them about themselves and what interests them in your service(s). Offer a small incentive for filling out the survey or simply ask people to do you a ‘special favour’ using the word ‘please’.
To form an accurate avatar of your ideal client/customer you’ll want to know their:
• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Number of children
• Education
• Annual income
• Disposable income / budgets
• Favourite websites
• Favourite pastimes
• Device usage
Uncovering Your Visitor Pain Points:
Once you know the pains your clients/customers feel, you can start thinking through how your service(s) helps to address or eradicate those pains. This information should stand out throughout your website content – especially on your home page.
Here are some ways you can start to uncover pains:
• Ask yourself, what keeps my clients/customers up at night?
• Look at your competitors’ sites to see what audience pain points they’re using
• Test your offers and ads with certain pain points in them to see which get clicked most often
Motivating Your Visitors:
You cannot create motivation on your site.
However, you can (and must) reflect your visitors’ primary motivation within the copy (content) on your site. At least on your home page.
You won’t necessarily describe motivation in your website content (copy); rather, you’ll want to reflect your market’s motivations, like:
• Reclaiming their physical health and fitness
• Feeling connected to themselves and other people around them
• Loving who they see when they look in the mirror
• Freedom to pursue their life passions
• Enabling them to align with their core identities
• Protecting their loved ones
• Guaranteeing their family’s well-being
• Loving themselves, period
Etc.
Current Level of Visitor Awareness
Can you answer the following questions:
“Do visitors to my site recognize they have a problem which needs to be solved?”
“Do visitors to my site know that solutions exist to aid these problems?”
“Do visitors to my site know that my service is one of those potential solutions?”
From a conversion perspective, the more aware your visitors are of you and your service(s), the easier it is to write content. That’s because, with highly aware visitors, you can spend less time educating… and more time leading your visitor to make a booking or sale.
If your audience consists of less aware prospects, you may need more detailed content such as articles, videos and tutorials to (i) help your visitors recognize their pains / desires, (ii) see that they need a solution and (iii) see that that solution is you and your service(s).
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