Focus On The Perfect Customer

One of my favorite aspects of Internet marketing is the fact you have to focus. Any company that tries to market to everyone on the Internet is going to go bankrupt unless they sell something that everyone on the Internet wants to buy and will buy. Most people that will buy anything shop at Walmart.  On the Internet they're looking for something in particular. The trick is to figure out how they would look for you.

One of the things that separates every business is the owner and their personality as it evolves into the business. That uniqueness is what your customer is looking for and vice versa. When you understand exactly who your customer is and I'm not talking about every customer, but your best customer, you can do a lot better with Internet marketing and all of your marketing for that matter.

For example, if you sell ski jackets, 100% of your marketing money and effort should be aimed at skiers. There will be a lot of people who buy ski jackets that don't ski. Defining those non-skiers and trying to market to them can be a critical mistake. The non-skiers look to the skiers for the fashion trend.  The best marketing will be directed squarely at those skiers who create the image for the non-skier market. If the designs are youthful in nature, than the marketing will be directed at young skiers. The more narrowly defined your customer is the easier they are to reach and create a connection.

If you make designs for young skiers and they become popular among the young skiers, the young skiers will become your advertising conduit to the older skiers and the non-skiers alike. We think of social networking as being something new.  It isn’t, it is the medium used in social networking that is new. Marketing has always been about finding your customer and that customer extending out your brand.  Now the customers have tools that can send out messages with exponentially greater reach than telephones or mail.

Celebrity endorsements are a form of social marketing that pre-dates the internet entirely.  Getting a young celebrity snowboarder like Shawn White to give a genuine endorsement of your product can be a home run.  If the product doesn't live up to expectations though, word will spread and Shawn White becomes a "sell out".  Tony Hawk recently said he regrets giving a company "Carte Blanche" with his name because they sold many products that he didn't believe in.  Now he protects his name with 100% approval.  He knows his customer and doesn't want to let them down again.

Keeping this in mind as you build an Internet marketing program you will be able to better define the keywords that you focus on for your marketing and building your business. There are three types of keywords that work best for search engines and for matching and content placed advertising. There are keywords for browsing, keywords for comparing and keywords for buying. My suggestion is that 95% of your marketing money is focused on those keywords for buying and maybe 5% on comparing if you have a broad product line.  You might be better off narrowing your product line.

When you know your customer you will know what keywords they use to find and buy your product.  This is just one critical piece of information you gain from the conversations with your customers and highlights why knowing the customer is so important.  Your goal is to reach your perfect customer, make them happy and have fun doing it.  If you truly enjoy what you do for them, they will see it, and they will enjoy being a part of it.  When they enjoy being a part of it, they will go to work for you.