Website Design Blog

Use your website to target specific customer groups

These are customers from diverse markets that want to achieve the same outcome.

Different desired outcomes mean different customer groups

Few customers would buy a product or service through your website because of what that service is. They would buy your service to satisfy a need or number of needs they have.

Think about why someone would hire the services of a personal trainer? Would it be because they like exercising every day at 6 am while being encouraged to “feel the burn”? I doubt it. It’s because they feel the need or want to have a body like David Haye. That is what they are buying. Not the the exercise buddy.

When you understand the needs of your potential customers, and what you have to do to win them, you can then decide which of your products or services would interest them. Which ones would satisfy their needs.

Define your customer groups before you promote your services on your website

So it’s vital that you define your customer groups before you target their business. Doing otherwise would  be risking appealing to no one whatsoever and rendering your website like a rich tea biscuit and a cup of coffee. A waste of time.

Importantly, when deciding on the customer groups to target, you must remain mindful of the capacity of your product or service to deliver and meet the need. Getting customers’ hopes up and then letting them down is worse than never getting the customer in the first place, although it would be a valuable learning experience. But learn from that now.

Ultimately it is wise to rigorously review your targeted customer groups to weed out any groups you are unable at this stage in your business to serve. However, some of those groups that may not be viable now may well be in the future when your capacity, experience and ability increases.

Don’t be put off by bigger competitors

You may discover that some of your bigger competitors are targeting the same customer groups as you. Don’t be put off. Often they will have weaknesses you can exploit. They may have missed an angle or not fully satisfying the need of their target group. Analyse their website as if you were one of your target customer groups. Look at it through the eyes of a customer. Take note of the good and the bad which you notice and take that into consideration when devising your own website promotion.

Bigger simply does not mean better.

Your website should focus on 2 or 3 customer groups – and serve them well

Your instinct may be to target as many customer groups as possible. Not to put all your eggs in one basket. But to do this you would need a product or service that would appeal to everyone and you simply will not have one. Secondly you will need the budget of Google to reach and influence all those customers. Only Google have the resources of Google.

Targeting a niche market gives smaller businesses a better chance of succeeding.

Put simply, your vision of profiting from the services you offer can only be realised if you:

1. Identify your preferred customer groups
2. Select 2-3 that best fit the services you can deliver
3. Position yourself to actually deliver exactly what those customer groups need.
4. Are better than your competitors

In later posts I will discuss in more depth the process of identifying profitable customer groups.

Bless ya

James