Get to Know Your Audience

Posted On: 2012-07-20

And so we've reached Friday once more and you don't have to read between the lines of my columns here on Rated Hot to know that I love Fridays.

I might still go on working through the weekends but there's always a change in the tempo of that work and if I feel like taking some time off and getting away from the computer I can. So I love Friday's because the weekend is just one day away.

Now I understand that you may never stop working just because it's the weekend but seriously ... is work what life is all about? Sure you have to put food on the table but will taking just a few hours off at some time over the weekend make that much difference to your cash flow?

Where most of you guys are right now it's the middle of summer so get out and enjoy it! Spend some time with your family ... your girlfriend ... your boyfriend ... whoever is special in your life and rediscover the fact that there is a life out there away from your computer.

Get to know your audience
On a more businesslike note ... what do you know about the people you're trying to sell to? Do you know anything about the people who visit your websites or are you just throwing your marketing message out there and hoping that someone ... anyone ... will pick it up and actually buy what you're selling?

In some mediums it's quite easy to get some idea of who your audience is. Every time you use some sort of discount or loyalty card at a supermarket or department store you're giving that store's marketing department a chance to look into your life.

They can tell with an incredible degree of accuracy what your income level is ... how well your family is functioning ... what your kids are like ... even what time of the month it is for you.

In other mediums it's not quite so easy but you can still get some idea of what makes your target market tick. If you're running a business page on Facebook for example you can spend time wandering through the profiles of all those people who have liked your page and you can pick up some idea of their likes and dislikes ... what they do in their spare time ... and what makes them interested in buying.

Sadly though in our medium we don't get much information about our target market at all ... our sponsors might get plenty of great information but we don't ... or do we? Is it possible that we get plenty of information that could help us target our marketing but we just ignore it?

Well actually we do get some information that we could use if only we took the time to look for it and think about it.

For example a quick look at our server logs will give us some important information that we can compare that information from other data sources to get quite a clear picture of the people who are visiting our websites.

Look at the times when people are visiting your websites and compare that with broad geographic data that Google Analytics supplies and you might be in for a surprise. A lot of new webmasters seem to think that most people are hitting their websites during the evening but when you look at the data from your server logs and compare it with Google Analytics you might find that most of your traffic is happening during daylight hours.

Straight away that tells you two things about the people you are trying to sell to. The first thing it tells you is that people are surfing porn sites while they're at work. The second thing it tells you is that these people are less likely to be blue-collar workers and more likely to have a disposable income that they might spend on porn.

Drill down even further into the geographic data from Google Analytics and you can see what parts of the country your visitors are coming from. Are they coming from economically depressed parts of the country or are they coming from more affluent places?

And that's really just scratching the surface when it comes to what even our limited data can tell us. There's a lot more information just waiting for you if only you care to take the time to look for it and once you have that information you can take a serious look at how you can better target the people who are visiting your sites.