Keep Your Target Market In Mind
With the new year in full swing, before you update or redesign the various aspects of your website, ask yourself if you are keeping in mind your target market. The colors on your website need to represent more than what your company likes, SEO keywords should be selected based on more than what your competition is using, and which social media network you are on shouldn’t be based on which ones your intern uses. Here are a few things to consider about your target market when making key decisions:
On Your Website:
- The layout of your website should reflect your target markets needs. Why are they coming to your website? Make sure the information they are looking for is easy to find.
- The colors/fonts should reflect your target market. You wouldn’t use pinks and purples for a site geared towards men would you? Keep in mind the age, professions, and general demographics of your target market when designing your website.
- The voice and tone you use in your website should reflect that of an expert in your field. If you are trying to attract the business of professionals, your language should be professional. However, if you are trying to attract younger, less mature audiences, a professional voice could turn them away.
- The photos and images used on your website, which is often overlooked, should reflect the needs of your consumer. For example, if you are a vacation rental company targeting older visitors, pictures of the building are much more important than pictures of the beach and volleyball courts. However, if you are targeting younger visitors the comfort and “homey” feel of the accommodations are of less-importance.
In Your Blog Posts:
- Are you blogging about information that is useful to your readers? This may seem obvious, but many business blog about what is important to them, not their clients.
- Is your voice and tone consistent with the rest of your webpage? Just because the blog is a chance to be more personal, doesn’t mean you should slack off and use slang on a professional website!
- Are your blogs something that someone would want to re-tweet, forward, or share? If you are blogging for a small percentage of your clients or just for the sake of blogging, scratch your blog and start over!
In SEO Keywords:
- Are you using the words you’d like your target audience to search for or the words that they are really using? Make sure to use the words that are really being searched for!
On Social Media:
- Are you on the right network? Is your target demographic on Twitter? If not, why are you? Make sure you aren’t spending your time on a network that you shouldn’t be. There are thousands of specialty networks that might be a better fit!
- What does your audience want from following you on social media? Do they want engagement, feedback, ideas, special offers? Make sure you aren’t giving them something they don’t want. It is okay to ask!
- Keep your tone of voice in mind here too! It’s a social network, so you can relax the most here, but the key terms and phrases are still the same. If you have a laid-back feel on your webpage, then you can keep the laid-back feel here too.
Remember to define your target audience before making any major changes and select these changes accordingly! We wish you the best of luck in reaching your 2012 goals!