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How to steal your competitors audience

Starting a business is not that easy. Besides knowing who you are, what you and your company stand for, how you?re going to brand and position yourself, you also should have a slight idea to whom you?re going to sell your stuff. Who do you want to attract? What person do you want to become a customer of your awesome Halloween-glibber-candies? Who a your readers?

Yes, you got it. Another article about market research! You have to know who your targeted audience and market is. That means, you need to spend some time on researching your niche.

When I was about to start my blog mariamcisse.com, I already learned a lesson: ?Just do it. But know what you do and to whom you do it!? To me, that means not just blogging the hell out of my mind without knowing whom I want to read my stuff, but to put a little bit of work in researching what my ?competition? is doing and who they attract. So I started looking around for resources, where I could get some information about the people I wanted to be appealing to and find a tone they can relate to.

Playing the Quantcast game:

Each niche has its leaders. Those, who are known, and accepted as authorities. So why not looking at their audience and figure out a way to reach them? I?d like to use Darren Rows from problogger.net as an example:

According to quantcast.com (April 26, 2010) Darren has a daily global traffic of 8.7k visitors. So I think this is a good place to start. Let?s have a look at his demographics:

Who is Darren?s audience?

1. Gender

53% of his attracted visitors / readers are female. Why? Well, I can?t answer the question, but it?s obvious that you have to treat a female audience differently than a male. Think about this:

• How do women speak or behave?
• What words, graphics or packages do they use, like or feel attracted by?
• You?re not likely going to be appealing to a female audience, when you try to pitch them bloody Rambo-style movies.

Get my point?

If you know what problogger.net is about, ask yourself:

• Why are so many women interested in blogging or making an online income?
• Do they want to be financially independent from their husband?
• How do women handle business?
• How are their decisions made? Emotionally or logically?
• Do they look for a way to combine work and family life?
• What might a woman?s motivation be to visit this blog regularly?

2. Age

The next point on the list is the audiences? age. In this case, many young adults (18-34 and sometimes called the Gen Y) visit the blog. Why? Gen X (the ?older version? of Gen Y ) and Gen Y are the dominating groups of Internet users. What does that mean for your type of business?

Young adults have the ability to adopt new technology very quickly. Maybe you should think about hiring one of them to help you with your business?

• What services do they use?
• How do they communicate?
• What products are they buying? I for example (Gen Y) still buy books in the bookstore, but am very open for ebooks now, since I?m married with my passion of personal growth and blogging. Young adults want to change the system and many of them are hungry in terms of growth, development and change.
• Are you able to serve their need? In this fast-living society time is rare for us because it costs money.
• Can you keep up with the trends we are discovering each and every day?

3. Ethnic heritage

On problogger.net there are more African American visitors than average. What does that mean to you when you want to reach out for Darren?s audience?

• Are they seen as a minority?
• Do they try to live the American dream more than Caucasians or Hispanics?
• What does it mean to be an African American?
• Are these proud people?
• Are they more skeptical?
• Is it harder to pitch them?
• Do they have special likes or dislikes?
• What is their understanding of community?

4. Kids in household

Problogger also attracts more readers with kids at the age of 0-2.

• Can you imagine what it means to have kids at this age?
• In what type of products might this audience be interested in?
• Do they have the time for a home study course?
• How much money do they spend on products?
• Where are they going to meet other parents?
• When do they have time to focus on things like reading, yoga or a membership site?
• At what time are they usually online?

Probably they?re more likely to buy stuff related to parenting than luxurious cruises or a yacht. Don?t you think so?

5. Income and Education

How could you be appealing to less affluent college graduates? This is another segment of Darren?s audience. Ask yourself:

• What do they spend their money for?
• What music are they listening to?
• Where do they do for a drink on Friday night?
• Where and how do they live?
• What leisure activities might they have?
• How do they dress?
• What is more important to them, quantity or quality?
• What are their dreams? Their fears?
• What does it mean to always be aware of your budget?

Paint a picture

When you try to see the overall picture, you might come up with this:

Darren?s appealed audience is a less affluent college graduated African American woman with kids at the age of 0-2 in the household.

Is Darren serving his audience right? Well, he obviously does a good job If you?re about to reach out for his audience and ?steal? a little bit of his traffic, take your time to find out, how your business might serve their needs and be appealing to them too.

Let?s discuss

Got the idea? How would you try to be appealing to this audience? Leave your comments below to let me know what you think.

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Published by: Grant Griffiths

Full post as published by Blawg for Profit on April 29, 2010 (boomark / email).