Give your customers a reason to bite! Your website content should help move customers one-step closer in the five stages of the consumer buying process, to purchase from you and close the deal.
“Give me a pastrami sandwich on dark rye… hold the pastrami!“
Tasty Website Content Comes From Understanding Your Audience.
Just as you can’t make a great pastrami sandwich without the meat, a website with too little, or the wrong kind of website content, will leave visitors hungry and looking elsewhere. So now you need to step back and ask, who is your target market and what website content are visitors searching for? Glad you asked!
1. Start By Defining Your Target Market
A prudent first step is to identify and define the market or markets your business wants to reach. For a quick example, let’s use an accountant. If the bulk of your workload is in restaurant tax planning and personal trusts, both of which, let’s say, have proven profitable and enjoyable for you — then you’ve identified your starting point!
2. Refine Your Target Market
To get better results, refine your initial broad markets even further. This takes a bit more analysis. Consider where you are now and where you want to be in six months, three years, five years or more down the road. What kind of customers would you like to have, regardless of your experience? Which customers will help you achieve your business, financial, professional, personal, and family goals? Once you have a clear picture of your future, (and you’d be surprised how many small business owners don’t) then decide what type of information, features, benefits and website content will appeal to that market.
3. Identify What Website Content Your Customers Want
Focus your website content on the needs of your market. It’s really that simple. Provide website content that is customer-centric, such as how-to articles, educational newsletters, product and service comparisons, helpful reviews and features and benefits breakdowns. Once you tap into your customer’s emotional needs — your business will benefit from more intimate relationships, increased sales, repeat purchases, and better, more profitable customers.
Notice the fundamental shift here? Most small businesses can’t seem to step down from the soapbox and stop talking about themselves. Unfortunately, their website content sounds like a broken record, playing to the tune of “I, I, I, Me, Me, Me.” They focus on their services, their biographies and their experience… and fail miserably at conveying anything of real value to potential customers and providing website content that moves the prospect along in the buying process. Provide valuable website content for the market you define.
What say you? Have a question, comment or suggestion about how to create delicious website content? Leave us a message in the comment section below. We’d be happy to respond and start up a discussion. If you liked this article, why not subscribe to our feed? Thank you for reading!
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