Marketing

So, you truly believe you know who your website audience is. Hopefully, you don’t believe that is enough. You still have to make and maintain a favorable connection with your prospective and current customers.

How do you do that? The answer is by using the other 4 Ws as they relate to online marketing.

What — Refine what you want to say. Well-written, relevant, and grammatically correct copy is imperative. It doesn’t matter if it is a 1,200-word blog post, a 140-character Tweet, a product description, or a Google AdWords text ad with a 25-character headline and two 35-character description lines. Provide relevance and value.

When — The adage, “Timing is everything,” is true.  Know when to send your message to your audience.

• Look at your website and or Facebook analytics to see when most of your visitors are online.
• If you have a newsletter, check to see when your subscribers are opening your email.

Where — You said you know your audience. Go where they are. If the majority of your website visitors get there by searching Google, you may want to consider Google AdWords (the type of campaign may depend on the devices your visitors use). If your audience is on Facebook or Pinterest you should be too, and consider advertising there. The same is true of other Social Media. If they listen to the radio, a short commercial always closing with your URL can be effective. Similarly, classified and other newspaper ads can be effective as well. Remember your “Who” drives your “Where.”

Why — Are you trying to . . .

• create brand awareness?
• drive traffic to your website?
• reduce inventory of a particular product?
• announce a new product or service?
• build your newsletter subscriber list?
• thank a returning customer?

The reasons why you are trying to reach your audience affects what you say, when you say it and where it is told.

Applying the 5 Ws as they relate to your marketing plan (You do have a marketing plan, do you not?) will reward you for your time spent. After all, simply identifying your audience is not enough.

Who is your audience? That is one of the very first questions we ask our new clients. The answer to that question is something that should be at the forefront of every business plan and marketing decision made for any business. Of course, identifying your audience is not enough. You need to know if your story is reaching them.

Many of you are going to say, “Of course, we know our audience” and I will grant it is likely that you do.

Assuming you do know your audience, are those in your target audience among your website visitors? Have you checked lately? You do review your website analytics regularly, do you not?

Here is a little checklist for you.

• Are you reviewing the demographics reports?
• Are your visitors in your target age group?
• If your target audience is a particular gender, are the majority of visitors that gender?
• What is the ratio of “new” users and “returning” users?
• Does that ratio coincide with your marketing plan?
• Are the visitors to your website spending time on the pages you want them viewing?
• Where do they go when they leave those pages?
• Do they leave your website or do they look at more pages?
• Is your conversion rate what you would like it to be?
• Are visitors filling out a form or making an order?

If you are not measuring, you are not marketing, and if you are attracting the wrong audience, you are not marketing at all!

Are those in your target audience among your website visitors?