Congratulations and welcome to your first weekly internet marketing newsletter. I know you are going to love it, so read on.
There are 3 basic types of internet marketer:
- Local business owner
- Global business owner
- Affiliate
Which type of internet market are you? The reason you need to know is that you need to think about your marketing in very different ways. You can be a combination of these, but either way you still must target your audience in different ways.
One of the most basic marketing mistakes made by businesses is to think that everyone can use your product or service. If you try to target everyone, you dilute your message so much, you end up targeting no one. It really is that simple (apologies if you already know this, but so many people I talk to really don’t get it).
So let’s take a look at each of these basic sectors:
Local Business Owner
You run a service or sell products to your local market. If you are already in business you should have a good idea of the demographics of your customers. You are looking for majorities here. Are they of a particular gender? Are they mostly in a certain age group? Are they mostly of a specific social class (eg. educated, home owner, professional etc.).
Whichever stands out, start to tailor all your messages to that specific market. Add the local factor into the list. For example, do you have pictures of local places of interest on your site? Do you have your business telephone number on the front page of your site? And if so, are you showing your local area code? (we all love free 800 numbers – but that makes you ‘National’ not local – are you just one of many clones or are you unique?)
You need to make people who visit your site understand that you come from the area. And to do that you need to show them familiar places and other things relevant to their locality.
Global Business Owner
You would think the exact opposite applies, but think about targeting different areas with local looking pages. This way you can conquer the globe region by region. Your customers will assume you know something about where they live this way. You can also push the freephone number to show you have muscle if that is the image you want to portray.
Affiliate
This makes up by far the largest number of sites out there. As an affiliate you will be targeting a very specific niche and writing very relevant and enticing copy on the products or services you are promoting.
I will be going into much greater detail about all these aspects in the future so keep your eyes peeled for my weekly newsletter (or sign up if you stumpled upon this by accident).