Something we talk a lot about with our clients is audience segmentation, a hugely important aspect of the success of any website. It’s unlikely that your audiences will go to the effort of sifting through rafts of information to find what they are looking for – whether it be a website or another activity, just as you would begrudge doing so in turn.

Knowing this, here are some activities that will help you define your audiences, discover audiences of value, segment them and put relevant information in their path for them to engage with your business.

1. Audience Keyword Analysis

This is one of the simplest, yet most important exercises when starting or adding to an existing website. Many of our clients come to us with no concept of what VALUE keywords to target. Now, the value of a keyword can be difficult to define, as there are specific, obvious terms that you would think would be of value to target – for example:

Many of our clients will come to us with no concept of what VALUE keywords they wish to target. Now, the value of a keyword can be difficult to define, as there are specific, obvious terms that you would think would be of value to target – for example:

“Luxury basement pool designers in London”.

However, this is specified by type: “luxury” and “basement”, by product:  “pool”, by service: “design” and by location: “London”.

Of course, if you are a company that designs luxury basement pools in London –  then this is a great search for you to target and those searching for such a term are very likely to convert. However, the volume of monthly searches will be very low as it is a very specific search term. Thus, investing too much time in achieving top rankings for similarly specific keywords can be a dangerous tactic and not one to produce mass sales.

Whereas, if you were to target “luxury swimming pools” – a more generic keyword, you are likely to attract a larger volume of traffic. Although the traffic from this search is less likely to convert, as it is vaguer, it is still relevant to your business and will attract a more relevant audience to the previous, more specified keyword.

So, if you can generate enough traffic for this search, then it will help boost your click-through rate, therefore, boosting your overall rankings and so it remains valuable.

To further define search terms, we need to check what people are interested in and where are they in the buying journey. For instance, are they interested in looking at examples and seeing what is out there? (The early buying stage). Are they interested in the cost of various types? (The mid buying stage). Or are they interested in the cost of a particular product i.e pool type? (The mid to late buying stage). And finally, do they want to arrange a meeting or telephone enquiry? (The late buying stage).

You must give each of these audiences what they need by catering for each step of the buying stages and invite them onto the next  – this can be done through the structure and design of your website and via clear calls to action.

2. Audience Segmentation

So – still sticking with the pool theme – we need to ensure we segment the audience. To do this we need to answer the following questions:

  • Who are my audiences? Are they the public, contractors, architects, potential staff, partners or other?
  • What are the key interests of each audience? i.e. Types, cost, timescales, experience, specification or desired running costs?
  • Which audiences are of most value to the business? This needs to be defined by the profit of service compared to the amount of traffic needed for that service.
  • Where do I need to be to be on my audiences path? Where do they ‘hang out’ online, what else are they interested in? This may be social channels, particular blogs, other websites or governing bodies.
  • How do I ‘hook onto’ each of these audiences? Why should they choose my business over the competition?

Once you can answer these questions you will be in a position to carefully structure your website in such a way to give a home for each audience. One where you can show them what is most relevant to them.

3. Keyword Analysis by Audience and Need

Once you have segmented your audiences, it is wise to go back and do keyword analysis for each audience and consider their needs whilst evaluating what is best to target and the value of these targets to your business.

There are usually valuable search terms you have missed the first time around; ones that the competition has probably missed too!

4. Use Your Audience’s Language, Not Your Own!

Internally, many businesses use abbreviations, technical jargon and terminology that is unique to them, and not how you describe yourselves as a business.

As an example, I have found a pool company that has described themselves on their website by what they do: “Design and Construction of Swimming Pools”, which has an average monthly search volume of 10.

Now if I am searching for a company that designs and builds swimming pools, I am never going to use that terminology and the numbers back this up. I would search for something like “Swimming Pool Designers” (390 searches per month) or an even better example “Swimming Pool Builders” (1600 searches per month). This shows how by using internal terminology can lose you a huge amount of traffic to your website!

Getting our clients to understand the way in which this works can sometimes be problematic, as they often want to get creative with how they describe their business, by introducing emotion and catchphrases. Try to stay away from leading with emotion in your page titles and headings, as this can be meaningless to search engines.

Of course, the more traffic there is then often the more competitive and costly it can be. This cost divided by value will help you decide what you want to target and how to target it by either paid (PPC) or natural search strategies. Which is a discussion I will be covering next!

Rooster Marketing – Your Digital Search Marketing Experts

At Rooster Marketing, we are privileged to work with some great clients in a fantastic location, just outside Winchester in Hampshire. If you, like them, would like to know more about how you achieve the results and rankings you desire from search engines and audience segmentation – we would be more than happy to chat in further detail.

To get in contact, call 01962 841 200 or drop us a line here, and we’ll get back to you soon.

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