When your target customer gets online, do you know what they intend to do?

Darren Rouse of Problogger shared the Ruder Finn Intent Index on his blog last week and boy is it a valuable tool!  This index is a significant, ongoing research project that measures the reason why people are going online when they fire up their computer and connect to the internet.  For small businesses with limited marketing funds, this is a great way to help focus your internet marketing activities to the places where your target market is spending most of their time.  For example, women intend to socialize significantly more than men and men are more interested in online entertainment than women.  The great part is that the tool is interactive and breaks the categories down into specific tasks.  So check it out to get help targeting your internet marketing.

Targeting your marketing activities is very important – whether it is email marketing, blogging, social media, internet advertising, affiliate marketing, SEO, etc.  The internet is vast and most small businesses are not trying to sell to the world, so be as specific as possible.  Further, you have to make sure you are visible where your target customer will be – hence the value of the Ruder Finn Intent Index.  Target marketing can be scary for many small businesses because it involves shrinking the total number of prospects in your pool.  In a tough economy like today, the last thing we often want to do is give a potential customer an easy reason not to consider us.  So we try to be everything to all potential customers.

Here’s the problem with that…when we try to be all things to all people, no one really knows exactly what we do so we never come to mind when they are trying to find an answer to their problem.  And, if we do come to mind, they aren’t sure if we do what they think we might do and it’s too much work and effort for them to find out – unless you already have a very strong relationship with them – and they turn to a company that is more obvious.  Therefore, you end up losing more potential customers from ambiguity than from being too focused.

The other danger to being all things to all people is that many of the services or products outside of your core offerings often tend to have lower ROI.  They may take more time because your business is not optimized for them and they may even be lower revenue generators.  If you take on too many of those outlier jobs, then – before you know it – those services are what you’re known for!

Answer the following 2 questions:

1. What is  your flagship product/service?
2. Who makes the decision to buy that product/service?

The person who makes that buying decision is the person to whom you need to target your marketing.  For example, one of my clients (Little Songs) creates and sells educational music CD/DVDs for young children.  The people who will decide to buy her product are 1.) early elementary and pre-school teachers (because there is a curriculum guide) and parents (because they are entertainment and educational).  I’m going to hazard a guess that two-thirds to three-quarters of those people are women.  The Ruder Finn Intent Index tells me that 91% of women (compared to 73% of men) go online to socialize.  Therefore, social networks are the main place to be for this client.  With social networks, you can promote yourself organically through participation and/or with paid, targeted advertising.

If you’re a small business, internet marketing is far more cost effective than print media – but only if you make sure you are focusing your efforts on your target market.  The internet is too vast to try to do everything.  Pick a few marketing strategies that put you in front of the people who will write the check and focus all of your efforts into those strategies.  That way you know that you’re getting the customers you want and who want you!