Do you know exactly who is in the ideal target audience for your membership acquisition plan? More importantly, does it matter whether or not you know your audience? Sometimes it can be easy to fall into the pit of believing that creating a great product is all you need to do to attract customers. But if you want to really see your website membership grow, then you need to know who to talk to and what that audience wants to hear.

Use Target Marketing

The business website BPlans.com defines target marketing as the process of finding people who are interested in what you have to offer. The process for finding a good target audience can be complicated, but the pay-off makes the hard work worth it.

Real target marketing goes way beyond where people live and how much money they make. Real target marketing deals with people’s interests, their consumer patterns and their Internet behavior. In order to determine who is in your target market, you have to know as much about those people as possible. But how do you determine who is in your perfect target market?

Use Market Research

Your membership website has a focus to it that will appeal to a certain type of Internet viewer. Believe it or not, your website may actually appeal to more than one type of user. Boundless.com reminds us that the most a message is more warmly received by a group that is interested in the content of that message. In other words, your target audience may cover a variety of ethnic groups and age groups, but it has one thing in common – your website.

Good market research will show you just how to develop a target audience that will be interested in your message. It could be that business professionals who work in rural areas have a strong interest in joining your website. In this instance, it does not matter what age or race the user is. All that matters is that they fit the profile of your target audience.

Use Your Competition To Help Guide You

While you want to believe that your website is unique and offers something that no other site offers, there is a very strong chance that you have competition. The first step towards developing a strong target audience is to admit you have competition and then start using that competition to your advantage.

Go on social media and see who is following your competition’s website. Take a look at the interests of the people who have memberships with the competition and it will become much easier for you to gain an idea of what kind of target audience you need to focus on.

Once you establish a profile of the kind of person who follows your competition on social media, then you can start separating your business from the competition by including the factors that make your website a bit different. Your competition may be appealing to college football fans from the Midwestern United States, but your content could expand that audience to include sports video game fans as well. Do some research and you will find the perfect target audience for your website.

Membership acquisition is a matter of finding the right people to talk to about joining your website. Throwing out general inquiries to large groups of people is a waste of time and money. If you want to find success with your membership campaigns, then develop a target audience and you will see a significant return on your marketing investment.