The Importance of Audience

We could go straight into SEO and discuss all sorts of ways to optimize your website or other digital project but one thing very close to my heart is making sure that the fundamentals you start with are sound.

I’ll use an example from my hobby, a car club in which I spend my spare time working on the website, creating articles, maintaining a free marketplace, posting member stories and building event galleries.

The success of the website has shown a lot of members who own their own businesses that the web has huge potential in connecting with potential customers. Unfortunately though, not all of them have understood that although customers can find them quickly and easily (well, not always unfortunately), customers will also judge them just as quickly and just as easily.

One guy created a simple website and wrote about his product range, segmenting it by vehicle model. A pretty much foolproof system you would think but during the process he’s completely missed the vital step of making sure that his content makes sense to his audience.

Being a mechanic he’s listed each model by the technical platform (family) and not by the badge that’s stuck on the boot. You know the one, the badge that most people who own a car, identifies that car as. The upshot? Potential customers, who don’t see their car listed, don’t understand what platform their car belongs to and decide that it’s all too hard and go to the next search result.

Now I’ve used car products as an example but this can relate to any business. You could be a global powerhouse selling your ideas and insights, you could be an online solutions provider selling your experience or you might just need to let the world know you’re open for business – whatever you are, if you don’t know how your content actually relates to your customers, how is the average online user going to know which shiny exhaust of yours to pick?