Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

When you sit down to build a free site, gallery or any other type of marketing site just who are you selling to? Do you even have so much as a vague idea of the type of person you're building the site for or are you just building it in the hope that someone, somewhere, some day will find your market message appealing and buy what your selling?

When you don't know who you're selling to then it's easy to fall into the trap of selling to yourself. You use concepts and language that appeal to you; you use images and promotional material that appeal to you and you can do a great job of selling to yourself but are you doing such a great job of selling to those people who are visiting your site and who have money to spend?

If you think that you're doing a great job of marketing the products that you're pushing but that's not exactly reflected in your sales figures then perhaps it's time to start thinking about just who you are selling to. In fact it's time to more than just think about the person you're selling to, it's time to develop some characters that you see as being your typical customers.

The Eisenberg brothers (two of the leading online marketers on the planet today) call these characters personas and they see these personas as being invaluable for any marketer who wants to get serious about making money online. A persona is a composite of the people who want to buy what you're selling and instead of marketing to yourself you market to that persona.

So what goes into a persona? Well think of age, social standing, the economic situation a real person who visits your site might find themselves in. Think about the language they would use and how they would approach your site. Think about their home life, their work life, how they interact with those people around them.

But do more than just think about it. Start jotting down your ideas and making notes about the things that are important for a real person that might be close to the persona you're trying to create.

Then combine those notes and ideas and assemble your persona as a real character. Describe the persona in writing and reduce that written persona to a list of the important points that you need to keep in mind when you marketing to them.

Give the persona a name and perhaps even give it a face and body too. Put that image and list up somewhere that you can see it when you're working on your web sites and then market to that persona that you have created. Appeal to them where they are, stress the benefits of the product you're selling to them ... where they are in their life.

It won't take you long to realize that the persona you have created is probably quite different to you and you won't be writing marketing messages that appeal to you anymore. Instead you'll be writing to that persona and your marketing message will be taking on a different tone and perhaps even a different focus.

Let's face it, you may find that a little weird but if it works for you and increases your sales who cares how weird it may sound. And don't stop at just one persona, look at creating a different persona for all the niches that you are marketing too because different things appeal to different people.

In some areas personas will be quite similar but in others there will be important differences that you really must keep in mind. For example some of your traffic may be 50-year-old middle-class males and obviously these guys are going to have some similarities but there are going to be some major differences too.

Some of these guys are going to like mature adult products while others are going to like teens and babes. Now if you try to fit one persona across all those divergent niches it's not going to work.

Instead you have to be prepared to look at those who are into the mature niche in a different way to those who are turned on by teens and babes. Some will comfortable with who they are and where they're at in their lives while others may be longing for the days of their youth and you will need to reflect that difference in the personas you develop if you want them to be effective.

Developing personas can help you discover and understand the people that you are selling to and you're crazy if you don't use them to improve your marketing.