When you’ve created your home business website and you’ve decided what product or service you’re going to promote you now, among other things, must determine who your customers are going to be and how you’re going to target these people on the web. In order to specify who your clients are going to be you should first create your mission statement which explains and identifies what your home based business is all about.
According to Entrepreneur’s website a mission statement is: “A sentence describing a company’s function, markets and competitive advantages; a short written statement of your business goals and philosophies. A mission statement defines what an organization is, why it exists and its reason for being. At a minimum, your mission statement should define who your primary customers are, identify the products and services you produce, and describe the geographical location in which you operate.”
So, as you can see from the above definition this statement is a summarized version of what your business is and what it encapsulates including identifying your target customer base. In order to define who your potential clients are you must first answer the following four questions:
1. Who are you going to target as your perfect customer? Who are the people who’ll be lined up and anxious to purchase your product or service? In order to create this sense of urgency within your website visitors to buy your merchandise you must first of all either solve the problem their facing or somehow make their lives a little easier.
For example, if you’re into Internet marketing as your theme and your product is a software program to increase your website traffic then of course you should target people who are experiencing problems driving visitors to their home page. If your product solves this problem then they’ll line up and be anxious to pay for your merchandise.
2. The next question you must answer, again using our traffic generating software as an example, is where do you find people who are having this problem. The majority of individuals who are experiencing traffic generation problems are usually new to Internet marketing and these newbie’s are typically anxious to overcome this issue and are willing to pay for the solution. You can find these rookies most often on Internet marketing forums and social websites such as face book and twitter. You can also check on Google, by using their free keyword search tool, because this is where Internet marketers usually go to try to solve their problems.
3. Next you should ask yourself: “how much can my customers afford to pay for my products?” Price point is very important because you don’t want to price your merchandise so low that your potential customers will consider it a low quality or inferior solution. And, you don’t want to charge your visitors too much because this may encourage them to seek an answer to their problem elsewhere. It may be wise to check out what the competition are charging for similar software and set your price accordingly.
4. Now that you know your customers and you know where you can find them and you have your price in place you should now ask yourself how am I going to close the sale, or in other words, how am I going to convince them to buy my product? This may be a hit and miss proposition at the best of times and may require several attempts before achieving your goal and converting your visitors into paying customers.
One strategy which may help is adding testimonials from satisfied customers to your sales letter which demonstrates the success they’ve achieved using your traffic generating software. This may be best accomplished by showing their traffic numbers before and then after they’ve used your product.
Of course the all important sales letter has proven to be the most effective marketing tool available for closing the deal. This letter of course must be well written and hit all the important points necessary to entice your guests to take out their wallets and click the buy button. The letter itself and how it’s constructed however are topics for another day.
Defining your target audience, knowing where to find them, setting the appropriate price for your product and ultimately closing the deal are four essential strategies you must master in order to achieve the success you desire with your home based business online.