Part of the
Kenno's Blog series.
By Ken Brown
Editor, You Can Learn Series
Updated: November 26, 2007
Identify Your Customer and Build a Web Page Just for Her
Do you have problems identifying your target audience? Are you unsure which
unique selling proposition to present to your potential customers? Are you
afraid you are leaving money on the table because you aren't targeting the
right people?
I have a solution for you. I had this brainstorm after reading an article by
Sean D'Souza,
Headlines: Do You Really Need 200 To Land A Good One?. The
article was excellent and will definitely help you write headlines that drive
business and paying customers to your website. Sean has it figured out as to
how to identify your customer so you can target your headline to that customer.
He has presupposed that each of his potential customers represents a market
where you can make substantial revenue.
To paraphrase his target headline strategy. You sell a product that has a
certain appeal to millions of individuals. As you sit in your shiny castle
trying to create a headline to reach all the millions you decide you have a
target audience. Sean say's to throw away that target audience. Then pick 5
different segments of the audience that have 5 different appeals. Then choose
one person from each segment.
Throw Away Your Target Audience
Where before you had a market of 5 million potential customers that you think
might be interested in saving money, high quality, easier processing, quick
cleanup and great gift idea. Now you have 5 specific customers. Five
individuals who will sit with you and tell you what is important to them. You
might have named your target audiences with cutesy names like "Cheap Freaks",
"Quality Gurus", "Time Savers", "Clean Freaks" and "Gift Givers". Well now each
of your five groups have a new name. You have Stephanie, Clarissa, Rhonda, Urvi
and Josephine.
You can sit with each of these customers and find out what is important to each
of them. And according to Sean, you can find out which headline will drive them
to your website. At this point Sean say's to pick one of the five and write
your headline to just that one person. Then you will have a specific person
coming to your website who really represents one million, five million or even
a "squillion" customers just like Stephanie or Clarissa or Rhonda or Urvi or
Josephine.
I say that Sean doesn't go far enough. I think he is right on with the
strategy, but this is a new age of marketing. You can do so much more than ever
before.
Test New Headlines, New Copy, ...
I grew up in the Direct mail industry. In direct mail you had a limited budget
and you would create a mail piece that you thought would drive the most
business. That one mail piece might be mailed to 5 million people. But, then
you would test other ideas. New headlines, new copy, and new unique selling
propositions. Each of your tests would go out to a representative number of
people. You might mail slightly different versions of your master direct mail
piece to 5,000 people or depending on your ad budget, groups of 50,000 people.
After the mailing you would wait 1 week, 2 weeks or even 3 weeks before you
began to get results. Then after another 3 to 4 weeks you began to analyze the
results. How did your tests perform against the control? Did a specific
headline drive more requests for information? Did a change in the text or copy
perform better and produce more sales per thousand mail pieces sent?
You wait for more info to arrive, you analyze the data some more and then you
start the process all over again for the next mailing.
Today you can speed up this entire process. You already have a website. You
already have a sales letter page (landing page) where customers come to learn
more about your product and hopefully buy your product. Maybe you think you
need a new headline. Maybe your copy sucks. What does your customer say about
your product? Why do they buy? I recommend you talk to the Stephanies and
Josephines. Not so you can change your one landing page. But to Jump Start
Sales.
Brilliant Idea to Jump Start Sales
This is Internet Marketing at its best. You know different customers are
motivated into buying your product for different reasons. Capitalize on that
knowledge.
How do you currently drive your customers to your website? Do you send out
direct mail pieces? Maybe have banner ads running on other websites. Do you
count only on organic results? Do you send out a daily, weekly, monthly or
quarterly newsletter? What is getting customers to go to your landing page? We
both know you already have this process established and you know what it is. It
might (and should be) all of these methodologies.
Well here is an idea that will blow your mind. It works for direct mail, banner
ads, magazine ads, organic search results and even newsletters. You know there
is a need to test headlines, copy, color and positions of buy buttons. Here is
my idea.
Build a Separate Landing Page for Each Individual
You identify what motivates each of your target individuals. Then you build a
separate landing page for each of them. What??? A separate landing page for
each individual. If you have identified 5 different target individuals then you
build 5 separate pages. You can even build A/B splits for each page. Imagine
being able to test your ideas and putting your marketing genius on the line.
Sales should skyrocket. WIth the ability to build dynamic pages, any good
programmer with a database could make this work.
If you sell laundry detergent you might have people looking at how they can
remove stains from clothes. They would go to a page that would contain a hard
sale of how your laundry detergent removes stains. Then another page would
concentrate on making your whites whiter. You can then direct the user to buy
on the same page or even have separate pages to place an order.
Why will this work? Because it is hard work. It could be expensive. But, you
can capitalize on it because only a few will do it right. Think out your pages.
Make sure you use your keywords to get the natural organic push you want. You
should be able to go to a search engine and type in a specific query that is
exactly right for that individual customer. And it should take the customer
right to the page perfect for their specific selling proposition.
You have to make each of the sales messages different enough so you don't get
dinked by Google and the other search engines. Create 5 separate headlines,
five unique sales messages and make the perfect landing page to help you
increase revenues. Give this strategy a try and see if you don't push your
numbers through the roof.
Has Anyone Done This?
Has anybody done anything like this? Yes, the SEO site seomoz.org recently did
a little contest. I don't think they realized that they were using this
strategy, but it came out very close. The contest asked some of their members
to come up with a sales letter. They received a number of unique ideas and then
put them to the test. Each sales message was given some time on the website.
They were able to measure the traffic to the pages and then how many potential
customers made the decision to go on and buy their product. Their product was
membership in SEOmoz.
This is a perfect example. Each of the sales letters worked. Some had a hard
sell others had soft sell. Some of the messages were long while others were
short. After a few weeks they had a clear winner. Now for their purposes they
chose one message to continue with on their website. But, what if they could
correctly identify the perfect sales message to the website visitor? Wouldn't
that be awesome? Then when the customer came to their website they were already
prequalified for that sales message. They are going to buy, because you already
know how to motivate them to say "yes" to your product offering.
Have fun with this idea and learn about your customers and make a lot of money
in the process.
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