Why your website should speak to one customer

Last week, I met with a small business owner, Leticia, who was unhappy with her website.

We opened it up together and I asked her, “Who does your website talk to?”

“Everyone,” she replied.

Cue the record scratch!

No wonder she didn’t like her website.

It was generic and forgettable.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:

👉🏼 If you market your business to everyone, you market to no one.

We spent a fair amount of time digging into precisely who her customers were.

As it turned out, she was a health insurance broker who found most of her business through referrals from health care providers.

A few individuals came to her, but they were few and far between.

As it turned out, those also came through word-of-mouth referrals.

However, her website addressed individual consumers and totally disregarded doctors' offices and other trusted sources.

I encouraged her to refocus and rewrite her website to speak directly to the healthcare providers who would send her referrals.

Are you like Leticia?

If you have two, three, or even several types of customers, and you're trying to speak to all of them with a single approach in an attempt to capture all of them, I encourage you to stop and think.

Follow these three steps:

1️⃣ Identify your customers and segment by groups based on their shared interests or problems.

2️⃣ Ask yourself which group represents the largest number of people for the problem you solve. (Or the greatest opportunity for you.)

3️⃣ Focus your marketing and messaging on that group.

For example, your business might help teachers, tutors, and school administrators.

If your product or service helps mostly teachers, then focus on the teachers.

Don’t worry that you will drive away the other audiences.

Strangely enough, when you start to speak specifically to one type of customer, you will also attract other customers who have adjacent or complementary interests. (Crazy, I know!)

If you can't bear to let go of the secondary audiences, set up a button or section on your homepage that directs them to interior pages that are tailored to them.

But don't go beyond one or two, max!

Make sure you focus on your marketing and messaging on the group that represents the biggest opportunity.

You'll find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Instead of driving away customers with one-size-fits-all messaging, your targeted marketing will attract new ones like a magnet.