Target Audience

You need to understand that you can’t do everything, as Harvard Business School professor, Michael Porter explained; you can’t be “all things to all people.” You need to pick a specific audience and cater to it, and only it. We’ll call these people the “must haves.” It is true that you will get some extra traffic from other people not in your target audience; we’ll call these the “nice to haves.” If you start directing your efforts towards your “nice to haves” you will not be providing as well as you could be to your “must haves,” and you will lose them. You want to pick a particular segment and focus all your efforts on pleasing them.

Knowing who your target audience is effects important decisions from the layout of your site, to the content you provide, and to which merchants you partner with. A page directed at older people for example will look very different from a site directed at teenagers. There are many ways to segment the market. To name a few, you could segment by demographic, psychographic or geographic criteria.

To be useful, segments need to be easy to recognize (actionable) and provide real insight into the customer’s motivations (meaningful). Once you have defined who your target audience is, you have the first part to your positioning statement. This statement begins with the word “For” and is followed by the target audience.

For example, my site for fishing tackle could be targeted towards many age groups, to men or women, or to people fishing in a particular region to name just a few segments. I have decided to target men between the ages of 20 to 45 that own a fishing boat for freshwater bass fishing. My statement would begin like this:

For men, ages 20 to 45, who own a fishing boat for bass fishing.

And that is all you need to do to start. Perhaps this seems silly but just with that, I already have some direction in making decisions. Which fishing poles do I talk about? Well to start, I can exclude everything from the saltwater section as my audience doesn’t use them. I can exclude stuff for kids. I will make my whole site cater to this audience with more than just the products, now I can select pictures that they will like, and have news on events specifically related to bass fishing.

Many affiliates fall into the trap of trying to provide something for everyone on their site. Some affiliates do this by having a link to every merchant running an affiliate program that you can think of. When you land on such a site you don’t search through all the ads to find the one that helps you do you? No, you click the back button and find a site that provides you with what you want; Sites like this never make any money at all. Remember, you can’t be “all things to all people.”


Benefits

The next part to a positioning statement is the specific benefits that you will offer to your visitors. This is what your visitors will receive in return for visiting your website. Many affiliates fail to offer a real benefit to their visitors and as a result, they fail to earn any commissions, as no one remains on their site long enough to see any of their links.

Your benefit could be in many different forms. More than likely, what you will provide is information or some sort of entertainment. Whatever your benefit is, make sure you can define it in concrete terms. If you can’t really define what it is, chances are that it is not a complete idea yet. Once you have your concrete idea, ask yourself, “would I visit this site to get …?” You might also want to test the idea on some other people – make sure that you choose people that will be honest and not just agree with you.

Knowing what it is you are trying to offer is again important so that you can use it as a filter. Knowing the benefit and target audience will help you know what to include and what to leave out when it comes to content. When facing this type of decision, you could ask yourself, “how will this help me to provide ... (specific benefits) to … (specific audience)?”

For my website directed towards men, ages 20 to 45, who own a fishing boat for bass fishing, I could provide information that will help them make informed decisions about their equipment purchases. My positioning statement would now look like this:

For men, ages 20 to 45, who own a fishing boat for bass fishing. My website provides reliable information on equipment to help bass fisherman make educated decisions on which products to purchase.

This statement would help me choose appropriate content for my website. It is an information website, specifically for bass fisherman. My purpose and content will not be entertaining my audience with jokes and pictures but rather informing them with reliable information that they can trust.


Reason Why

The last part of a positioning statement is the reason why. You need to know for yourself, and so that you can let your audience know, how you are going to provide the benefits we have just talked about. This is also a self check point. Can you provide the benefits you have stated?

The reason why part of the positioning statement starts with the words “that’s because.” We start this way because it is easy elementary school language. A positioning statement should be in simple language that makes sense. For my fishing website, the reason why my website provides this information is because it compares prices, quality and features of the different products. I have compared these products myself and have personal experience using many of them. So now my complete positioning statement would look like this:

For men, ages 20 to 45, who own a fishing boat for bass fishing. My website provides reliable information on equipment to help bass fisherman make educated decisions on which products to purchase, that’s because I provide comparisons of the various products on the basis of price, quality and features.


In Summary


Now that you understand the three elements of a positioning statement you can begin to write your own. Although this will take some time now, it will save you plenty of time later on as you make decisions regarding your website. A well written positioning statement will also improve the quality of your decisions as it acts like a filter to help you recognize and say no to inappropriate ideas.


From Jared Mackrory’s latest book, “Planning for Affiliate Success”
Available through Café Press
www.cafeshops.com/affiliate_book

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