Defining your Mission, Goals and Audiences
This article explores the importance of defining your mission, goals and your targeted demographic, their needs and the benefits they seek.
To create a successful website, it is imperative that every visitor understand clearly what you are about from the moment they click on your website.
Defining Your Mission
We refer to this clarity of mission as your Reason for Being. Many people may already have a good idea of what they are about from working on their Mission Statement for their company. If you already have a Mission Statement, this is a good time to review it. If you are just starting out, this is a perfect time to sit down and define your purpose.
For what purpose does your company exist in the world? And example of a statement might be:
To create the finest quality modern designed jewelry in world, enhancing the enjoyment and success of wholesale jewelry companies that will sell our jewelry and the lives of satisfied clients that will purchase it.
Once you are clear on your business’ mission ask yourself the following question:
- What general purpose will this web site serve for my company?
- Will the website serve to strengthen market awareness of your brand (a branding site), is the site’s purpose to sell a product (an e-commerce site), or is its goal to disseminate knowledge, etc.)
Next, ask yourself:
- How does the website fit in, what part does it play, in conjunction
with other marketing avenues available to you?
This is an important question. It is by considering the web in conjunction with other marketing outlets, that we create a symbiotic relationship, one in which each medium supports and enhances the other for greatest success. The whole can become greater than the sum of its parts.
For instance, if you have a brick and mortar store, you can use this location to advertise your website, hand out website coupons and collect email addresses for newsletters and special announcements. The website conversely, can advertise the brick and mortar store for you.
Audience(s) and Their Technology
Defining your User Groups
Once you have defined your Reason for Being and
the the role your website will play within your overall marketing efforts,
it’s time to consider who your audience will be.
Ask yourself:
- Who are you trying to reach/Who, what groups, is the site for?
- What is the perfect audience to buy your product or services?
- What are their general profiles -demographics (where they live, what
they do for a living, how much income they have, married, single, young
or old)?
- What problems do these people face that your product or services
can solve?
Put yourself in their shoes and envision what their a typical day is like for them. Ask yourself what problems they think about, what needs they have and what would make their life easier
- What end result is your target audience looking for from your product/service? What benefits will add value to your customers' lives?
Develop comprehensive fleshed-out characters. Create someone with whom you could carry on a substantive persuasive conversation.
It is imperative to know who will be interested in your site so that it can be created to best entice them to visit and become a loyal customer. You may very likely have more than one targeted group and each will have different needs and seeks different benefits. Unless you are planning on creating a separate web site to satisfy each targeted audience, it is recommended, after you have completed the above exercise for each group, that you review the separate lists to see what benefits they have in common. Make a list of these benefits and emphasize them throughout your website design. If the needs are quite different between groups, you may want to design sub-sections of your website that speak more directly to each group's needs. An example would be a fitness website where children, men and women each have separate sections that address their specific needs.
Technology
Technology, the quality of the computers being used by your primary audience and the quality of the bandwidth that they have available to them are very important issues to consider when creating a web site. Ignoring these factors led to the demise of more than a few large web site ventures during the late 1990s. Ask yourself:
- What technologies are your targeted demographics likely to have? (computer, speed, browsers, plug-ins?)
Today, the U.S. is moving fairly quickly toward the use of broadband with over 50% now using this faster connection. Urban areas account for most of the broadband connections. Many rural areas are having a harder time getting the infrastructure in place. We also find that broadband usage is higher among younger demographics as well as by those with higher income and education levels.
Defining Your Web Site Goals
Once you have clarified your Reason for Being, your primary Audience(s) and their technology, it’s time to decide on what specific goals you have for your website?
Ask yourself:
- Given your Reason for Being of the web site and the targeted user group(s), what specific goal do you have for your web site?
- What do you want your visitors of your site to come away with?
For some web sites the goal is purely to disseminate knowledge and they will feel that they have met their goal if their primary audience is enriched by the knowledge gained. Goals can be qualitative or quantitative in nature. A qualitative goal might include enjoying a certain amount of recognition whereas a quantitative goal would encompass specific benchmarks such as specific profit levels by a specific amount of time.
Is it an increased awareness of your product and company? Or do you want them to come away feeling really good about the purchase they just made at your site?
The next article reviews the types of web design services that are available to help you clarify what type would best meet your needs...
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Successful Website Marketing Strategies | Choosing a Web Designer Check-list |  |
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Contact Information:
- Pauline Sugarman
- Blue Pearl Marketing
- P.O. Box 344
- Larkspur, CA 94977
- Telephone: 808.878.3000
- Email: pauline(at)bluepearlmarketing.net
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