A key component of Internet marketing is to know who your customer really is. It is impossible to market a product to people if you do not know who the people are. When there was only brick and mortar stores, you knew who your customer was.
You need to take a few extra actions to find out who your prospects and customers really are, especially if you do business exclusively over the Internet.
I erroneously reasoned that my customers were most like me. After all, I designed my product with the idea of what would I like to see in a product, if I was my own customer. I would get angry with emails that I thought were stupid. Really dumb questions like how do I order and are you going to send me your software program in the mail?
After years of suffering with these dumb emails, I discovered that most of my customers were Asian females. What?! I could have sworn that I knew who my customers were, white men like me. I could not be more wrong. Everything finally made sense to me. These Asian females were not the best at the English language. I had sprinkled impressive words throughout the sales copy on my website because I wanted to impress readers. This was a huge mistake as my largest customer base could not understand the English instructions on my website!
I immediately switched to smaller words and shorter sentences in my sales copy. I also started paying for articles for my blog that were written by women on my subject and if possible, Asian women.
As soon as I made the changes, I stopped getting all those stupid emails. I had spent hundreds if not thousands of hours of my life replying to these stupid emails. They were not stupid emails. I was the only one who was stupid. I did not know who my customers and prospects were and so my sales copy was targeting the wrong segment of the population.
You need to find out who your prospects and customers are. To do this, you can use an awesome free tool called Quantcast.
Quantcast has a free signup form on their website. They provide Internet marketers with free visitor profiles for millions of websites.
This is what Quantcast told me about my website.
My website caters to a younger, more Asian, heavily female, more educated audience. The majority of my visitors are between 12 and 17. The majority of my visitors live in a home where the household income is less than $30,000 per year. Most of my customers are Asian. Next, they are Hispanic. Next, they are African American. Finally, there are the Caucasians. Remember, I thought that beyond any doubt, most of my customers were Caucasian males just like me. Caucasians turned out to be the smallest percentage of my sales.
I discovered that most of my visitors come from California's Los Angeles. So if I advertise offline, I should do so in the Los Angeles market.
My entire world was rocked when I learned who my customers really were. The entire view of my business and the services I provided changed after that. It was a low point for me. For then, I truly realized, I didn't know Jack. My own arrogance hurt my sales for some 6 years and cost me thousands of hours of extra work responding to emails that I really did not need to had I known who my customers really were.
I can not emphasize enough the importance of knowing who your customers are. Do not be arrogant because, in the end, it is only you that will suffer.
You need to take a few extra actions to find out who your prospects and customers really are, especially if you do business exclusively over the Internet.
I erroneously reasoned that my customers were most like me. After all, I designed my product with the idea of what would I like to see in a product, if I was my own customer. I would get angry with emails that I thought were stupid. Really dumb questions like how do I order and are you going to send me your software program in the mail?
After years of suffering with these dumb emails, I discovered that most of my customers were Asian females. What?! I could have sworn that I knew who my customers were, white men like me. I could not be more wrong. Everything finally made sense to me. These Asian females were not the best at the English language. I had sprinkled impressive words throughout the sales copy on my website because I wanted to impress readers. This was a huge mistake as my largest customer base could not understand the English instructions on my website!
I immediately switched to smaller words and shorter sentences in my sales copy. I also started paying for articles for my blog that were written by women on my subject and if possible, Asian women.
As soon as I made the changes, I stopped getting all those stupid emails. I had spent hundreds if not thousands of hours of my life replying to these stupid emails. They were not stupid emails. I was the only one who was stupid. I did not know who my customers and prospects were and so my sales copy was targeting the wrong segment of the population.
You need to find out who your prospects and customers are. To do this, you can use an awesome free tool called Quantcast.
Quantcast has a free signup form on their website. They provide Internet marketers with free visitor profiles for millions of websites.
This is what Quantcast told me about my website.
My website caters to a younger, more Asian, heavily female, more educated audience. The majority of my visitors are between 12 and 17. The majority of my visitors live in a home where the household income is less than $30,000 per year. Most of my customers are Asian. Next, they are Hispanic. Next, they are African American. Finally, there are the Caucasians. Remember, I thought that beyond any doubt, most of my customers were Caucasian males just like me. Caucasians turned out to be the smallest percentage of my sales.
I discovered that most of my visitors come from California's Los Angeles. So if I advertise offline, I should do so in the Los Angeles market.
My entire world was rocked when I learned who my customers really were. The entire view of my business and the services I provided changed after that. It was a low point for me. For then, I truly realized, I didn't know Jack. My own arrogance hurt my sales for some 6 years and cost me thousands of hours of extra work responding to emails that I really did not need to had I known who my customers really were.
I can not emphasize enough the importance of knowing who your customers are. Do not be arrogant because, in the end, it is only you that will suffer.
About the Author:
Written by Lance Jepsen. Discover a step by step approach to squeezing out the profits that lie hidden in your website. This step by step approach will increase the profits of your website. For more information see internet marketing book
