Choose Your Target Audience Carefully and Address Exactly Those You’ve Chosen

Stephen King agrees with me on this one. (Or is it me, agreeing with him?) You have to have a target audience, an “ideal reader”. And then stay consequent in your choice.

If you’re selling affiliate products, I’ll even give you a priceless tip about how to find out exactly who your audience is. I got this tip from the Wealthy Affiliate forum, from Travis (Bum marketing).

So let’s jump right into it…

Know Your Audience

You probably already have an idea about who your audience is. Or whom you’d like to address. Then write according to this knowledge.

If you’re aiming at dog owners, don’t write all about your cat. That will bore them to tears.

If you’re aiming at home owners, don’t tell them about problems in your rented apartment.

Yes, you and I know that you can have both cats and dogs, but you should keep the subjects apart, when you’re addressing your readers.

Lately, I read that a guy, I’ve admired for years in Internet marketing, just a few days ago has quit his day job. I was both confused and disappointed. I mean – I did that 13 years ago, and I buy his stuff?

Find Out Who Your Audience Is

If you’re selling an affiliate product with an existing home page, you’re in luck. You can probably find out exactly who your ideal reader is. And it’s important to know whether you’re addressing a woman, 30 years old without kids, or a man, 66 years with kids and grandchildren.

As I said, this was a trick I learned on the Wealthy Affiliate forum in a long thread about Nick that went from very little to around $45 per day (he aimed bigger, though, and he might have reached his goal today). In case you’re curious and a member of WA, you can find Travis advice on page 6 in the thread “$250/day PROFIT by July 1, 2008 or I HAVE TO QUIT”. Pure gold reading!

Okay, you head over to http://www.quantcast.com/, and you plot in your URL, and you’ll see who your target audience is.

This is the overall data I’ve found from looking at the Fatloss4idiots site. To the left, you see the site’s statistics, and to the right the index according to internet average. If the Index is lower than 100, it means that the site has less than average visitors from this group, and viceversa.

You can get an even clearer picture, if you click the link Demographics. Then it will show that this site has more than the normal share of african american readers, but there are still mostly caucasian readers.

So if you should write about fatloss4idiots, it’s a good idea to let your ideal reader be an “older” (50+) white woman without kids, no college, and an middle income.

Do you know a woman who fits that description? Then keep her in mind, when you write. Write only to her. Not to thousands of others, reading your site. But aim directly at her.

Try yourself with other products. It’s of huge value to know who visits those sites, you write about, so you’ll know whom to write to. No need to tell somebody with no education and very low income about how you vote extreme right wing, or read Shakespeare on the john, is there? You will not create rapport with your ideal reader in that case, anyway.