Your target audience and your users
There is a difference between your target audience (who you want to reach) and your user-base (who actually uses your website). At least that’s the mental model I’ve always used when approaching web design. Let me explain, using a nifty Venn diagram:
The following notation goes with the diagram:
A = population of all web users
B = your target audience
C = your user-base (users of your website)
D = target audience using your website (B∩C if you’re a math geek)
E = target audience not using your website (B \ C)
F = users who are not in your target (C \ B)
This model provides a good platform for discussing strategies and tactics for a website. For example;
- If F is big you might be targeting the wrong people. Or your content is attractive to people other than who you want to attract.
- You generally want to shrink E and F and grow D, such that B and C become much more aligned. That is, the people using your website match your target audience.
- To shrink E (the people in your target audience who don’t use your website) you don’t have to spend money on marketing! You can create good content that attracts them, or to put it another way, “use SEO”.
- And, following on from that, if the content and functionality are well crafted you won’t grow F.
This last point is an interesting one, and it’s something that isn’t necessarily clear to some in this industry.
Case in point, I was recently involved in a conversation where a website owner told me her organisation didn’t know who their audience is. Not just their users (C), but their target audience (B)! The distinction between the two, as “my model” above describes, is that people actually using your website are at most a subset of who you’re targeting (at worst they’re completely different).
The fact that these two groups are different isn’t uncommon, nor is it unusual to not have a good idea of who the people using your website are (you might have analytics that tell you what they do but still not know anything about them). But it’s kinda scary to not even know who you’re targeting—who you’re trying to communicate with—other than “people who use the web”. This is wrong on so many levels! How are we supposed to create useful content for that? How are we supposed to design an effective user experience for “anyone”?
So, I guess it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise after that, when there seemed to be no recognition that there are people out there not using the site who could be. This gap between users and target audience is full of your potential customers (E). These are the people who you can “win”. So how do you do it? I thought it was logical, you create something those people want. Quite literally, if you build it (good content), they will come.
I was told that trying to gain more users (grow E) wouldn’t happen because there was no budget for marketing. OK, but wow about just creating better content?! Do a bit of research, find out what that untapped vein are interested in. I may be delusional but if you have to spend big on marketing to trick people to use your website, there’s nothing worth using on that website. OK maybe that’s a bit harsh but you catch my drift. Marketing can help, for sure, but it’s not the only answer nor is it the most direct solution.
Thoughts?
Comments
I think you’re on the right track, but it doesn’t feel like it has solidified yet.
Rather than talk about increasing D, decreasing E, and decreasing F as separate goals, I would focus on the transition from letter to letter. Each of those transitions represents a group of people that you want to effect in a specific way — just saying you want groups bigger or smaller isn’t enough to base a strategy on.
I think you’re on the right track, also, with incorporating better content and better marketing into a strategy. It reminds me of the automatic auctions that go on behind the scenes when you see Google text ads: the ranking is determined by (quality of link) times (how much money the advertiser bids per click). Great, quality content is just as important as spending more money on marketing. You’re entirely right that if a company doesn’t want to spend on marketing, they can probably see some gain by improving their content/product.
Thanks for the feedback Dave. You’re totally right about it not being that solid yet, the post wasn’t much more than a brain fart with a Venn diagram attached. It would need a lot more work to make it into a strategy, but I guess my main point was these basic points aren’t obvious to everyone.
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