Web Content and Your Target Market

There are a lot of definitions of target market out there - and even more concepts that are related - such as core market or ideal customer. These distinctions and more the way you define them are important if you are someone who is responsible for writing or maintaining web content.

Let's begin with some definitions... these may not be the definitions in the dictionary for these terms - but they are the ones that will give you a stepping off point for thinking about your web content.

Ideal Customer: This is how you would describe your best customer - in terms of the general properties like age, years in business, level of knowledge or skill, or even less tangible aspects like commitment to certain ideals or practices.

A Target Market: What differentiates a target market from your ideal customer is the ability you may have to identify them and more importantly speak to them. A target market will share a set of concerns, fears, wants, dreams or grievances. Typically - but not always, they will be industry specific or vertical, although they can exist across industries or horizontally.

The more specific you can be in identifying a target market, the more effectively you can develop web content that speaks to them. Let's walk through an example using a fictitious company called LTC Book, who is an online retailer and wholesaler of language, travel and culture books. Because this seller is already defined with their products, we can more easily imagine the characteristics of their ideal customer.

The ideal customer for LTC Books might easily be someone who is between the ages of 25 and 50, reads regularly, enjoys languages and travel, buys books regularly, lives in the US, and is college educated.

A Target Market for LTC books might be completely different than this - for instance, this bookseller may target private middle schools and high schools that have 200-400 students, located in the west coast, that teach at least 3 languages. The language and social science teachers at these schools may fit the profile of the ideal customer perfectly, but what the target market does in this instance is give the seller a way to easily find the potential customers and it is a market that has the potential for significant repeat sales.

So how does all this relate to web content?  Follow our next post as I delve into the connection between Website Content, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Target Markets & Ideal Customers.

-mary


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