Some people still underestimate the importance of targeting audiences in marketing. Targeting your audience is a key factor to the effectiveness of your marketing activities online. First, what does it really mean? Targeting an audience in ecommerce simply means concentrating on a particular group of people that are more likely to respond in a positive way to your marketing campaign and what you do.
For example, if you sell fishing gear through a web site, you will probably receive more visits from fishermen than from bankers or basket-ball players. In this example, ‘fishermen’ is the targeted audience to look for. There are a lot of important things to talk about with this marketing based technique.
Let’s talk first about the consequences of not targeting audiences. The consequences are so disastrous and related; one of them, which comes first would be a loss of money. Obviously, you would lose your time and even worse blame yourself and maybe ecommerce. If you have already made mistakes in business, do not give up. Test what you do and learn from your mistakes. Now, take a look at this example. Imagine someone selling African art through a web site and advertising in every area this person possibly can, thinking that everybody would be interested in what he or she sells. What could probably happen to this person?
A) Lots of sales.
B) Loss of money in advertising
The correct answer is b), because some advertising areas would not yield much if not nothing. Maybe this person invested in an ezine where readers don’t care about art and love sports. Think about it, maybe this person would make some money, but there’s still a loss. Moreover, this kind of investment in marketing is very risky. The solution would simply be to target people that are interested in African art and emphasize on those who are more persuadable.
Now let’s talk about what you do or plan to do in ecommerce. Make sure you have the right products. By this I mean that you need to have something that some people would be interested in. It could also include something that is not quite tangible, such as your experience or knowledge in a particular subject. Do some research about what you do or plan to do, to see whether there are people who are interested in what you have to offer. You can take a look at competitive web sites to have an insight about the industry you’re in. Increase your chances by not getting into an industry where a big business monopolizes the market. Find a niche market or if you already have a business that makes some profit, emphasize on something of value that your competitors have not. Once you have gathered all the information you need, such as your target audience. Offer your products through advertising methods that work.
To sum up, targeting your audience will give you more out of your investment. It will save you time and money.
Here are 5 major advertising levels.
– Ezines
Choose ezines related to your business field
– Internetworking: Linking strategies
Visit www.linking101.com
– Press releases
Visit www.newsbureau.com
– Banner ads
– Search engines
Go to www.searchenginewatch.com to learn more about search engines.
Article by Stephane Kouandi, Owner and Webmaster behind ecMeans. http://ecMeans.com provides free tips about E-commerce and Marketing for beginners, small businesses and Internet entrepreneurs. For more articles, subscribe to ecMeansNews by sending a blank email to ecmeansnews@ecmeans.com
