Using Stats to Identify a Target Market

Review your website statistics and use the results to identify potential target audiences for new products and revenue.

Expand your market
Expand your markets

When you are creating your business plan and strategy you start by identifying your target audiences and what they need and how you provide something that meets that need.

After you have had your website up for a while – you might find that there are other people who are finding your website that may be outside of your original idea of a target audience.  Reviewing your website statistics may give some clues and ideas of other potential markets that you could tap into.

Example:

As a nonprofit of small business you may directly serve people in a specific geographic location.  Perhaps you provide training or consulting as part of your services.

Website Statistics - Map of Recent Visitors
Website Statistics - Map of Recent Visitors - view from Statcounter.com

You notice in your website statistics that you have visitors coming to your website from other parts of the country – or even internationally.  Although you don’t know WHO these people are – look at the path they follow and what pages of the website they look at.  This will give you some idea of their interest.  Also you may be able to tell where they came from (link from another website) or what key words they used in a search.

What could you offer these people?  Would you be able to charge for it?  Would it be appropriate for your mission? Would it potentially add value to your organization profile – and also of use to your own clients and affiliates?

You may want to consider creating “Information Products” that would meet the needs of this potential target audience.  Here are a few suggestions:

  • Webinars on specific topics.  These could be available free or for a fee.  With many webinar softwares it is possible to record the session, and make them available on your website of via a link.  You could also be building a library of these over time and offer on DVD.
  • eBooks. An eBook is readily accessible to download for free or by purchase.  Review the current publications that you have now – or think of topics that lend themselves to a book, whitepaper, or short tutorial that would be useful to this potential market.
  • Printed Books.  Investigate publishing a printed book using a self publishing firm.
  • Video. Videos are increasingly popular as a means for delivering training and tutorials and providing information to your target audiences.  If you are charging a fee for video views the videos could be in a subscription / members area.

As with any new product or service you will need to do your research, decide on the content, method and resources needed in order to carry this out.

Here are a few links to get you started. These are sources that I have used after researching and found they offer good value

  • Webinars GVO Conference enables you to put on a webinar, record it and store the link to use.  It is a good way to start as there are good tutorials on how to begin and help getting setup.
  • eBooks  and Printed BooksLULU.Com gives you the means to publish eBooks and printed publications.
  • Videos Screenr.Com has a free version that you can use to create tutorial. YouTube has a basic editor for video.

Denise Davies is an Internet and media consultant.  She works with nonprofit organizations and small businesses to maximize their effective use of the Internet to build their organization and achieve their objectives.  If you have questions or would like to learn more contact through the contact form

How can your local organization benefit from international web traffic?

Ideas for building new revenue streams outside of your local area. You may have a local business but see web traffic from international or outside your area.

Expand your productsWhen you review your website traffic statistics do you notice that some of that traffic comes from other countries? or maybe even from different parts of your own country that you consider are outside of your target market?

Perhaps you have always thought of your business or organization serving the local area where you live and that those other visitors to your website are not of interest to you.

There are some things that you can do to localize and appear more frequently in local listings – for example you can set up your business page on google maps; you can register your site with local portals; you can include town and city names in your key words and describe your target area in the content page.

However I would like to explore some ways that you can consider to benefit from the greater geographic coverage that the Interent provides.

First of all – what information do your visitors find MOST interesting.  Which are your most popular pages?  Review the products and services that you offer now.

Offer an online teleseminar webinar – there is no barrier to a person attending a teleseminar or webinar from anywhere in the world.  For some systems they only need a phone.  Others provide Voice over IP where attendance can be via the web so there is not even the cost of a phone call. Select a teleseminar system that enables you to record the call and you can have this on your website.

Digital information products – to build your non-local market – consider creating information products that can be delivered by a download once a person has paid. This removes the problems of shipping, packaging and can happen directly from your website without your direct intervention.  Your research will give you some hints about the types of products that will be of interest – and you can specifically aim at building that audience no matter where they are located.  Here are some examples of digital information products:

  • Teleseminar registration or downloading recording
  • EBooks
  • Tutorials and “How to”

Affiliate products – you may not want to create the information products yourself.  Look for affiliate products that you can sell from your website. You can browse Click bank and Commission Junction to select products that would be of interest to your target audience.

These are just a few ideas on expanding your business or developing revenue streams that you may not have considered as a “local” organization or business.

To discuss specific ideas on creating information products for your business contact me at Aleph Consulting