There are many instances where a website has multiple audiences.
A company that offers a service while also offering a franchising option.
A restaurant that sells directly to consumers while also offering catering.
A golf course that also uses the clubhouse and bar for weddings.
There are lots of examples.
The tricky thing with a business website is figuring out how to market to multiple audiences. If you do it incorrectly you can end up confusing everyone that comes to the website.
Here are some tips for how to set your website up so that it works for multiple audiences.
Tip #1. Prioritize
Who is your most important customer? Or audience member.
It’s a simple exercise, but it’s also overlooked. If you visit a website and get lost and confused it’s probably because the business wanted to please everyone. They treated all customers the same and that’s almost always not the case.
When you visit amazon.com you don’t see a link for Amazon Web Services unless you scroll way down to the bottom. AWS is big business for them, but it’s not the top priority or it’s not the top priority on that particular web page.
Step back from things. Write down all your target customers or audience members. Then prioritize them.
Tip #2. Focus On The Primary Audience
When you have your priority list make your website optimized for the #1 customer or audience member. Focus all the main pages and funnels on them. If you win their attention and convert them you’re going to win. Having anything that distracts your #1 customer from your goal shouldn’t be on the site.
The main heading on your homepage should address your customer or tell them what they want to know like what you offer to them.
The first button or link should be specifically for them. The main call-to-action should be for them. It’s all for them because they’re you’re top priority.
Tip #3. Put Secondary Options In Familiar Locations
If you scroll all the way down to the footer on Amazon you’ll see links for all the services they offer. Most people never see this, but let’s say you are the one in one million person looking for AWS. You can still find it because the footer is a familiar location for this type of information.
Your secondary customers or audience members know that they’re secondary. It doesn’t make them made or frustrated. They start looking in places like the footer for the information they need. And it’s not difficult because they’re just skipping all the main information. They know it’s not for them.
If you take away any tip from this post I hope it’s that one. Optimize your site for your main customer then create funnels for secondary customers and place links in the footers so they can find their specific funnel.
For our own website here at Ghost Blog Writers we do that with agencies. We partner with some marketing agencies that sell entire suites of marketing services and use us to provide the blogging service.
They aren’t our main customer, but we have specific content for them and it’s in the footer.
Tip #4. For Same-Level Priority Use Choose Your Own Adventure
Let’s say you go through the prioritization and you have two or more customers or audience members that are exactly the same priority. Or even pretty close. You just can’t ignore one of them more than another.
I get it. It happens.
The best method I’ve seen for this is to present calls-to-action that are exactly the same in terms of standing out.
An example might be a retailer that is split 50/50 between men and women. A good strategy for them would be to have two equal buttons or CTAs on their homepage. One for “Men” and one for “Women”.
Now the visitor arrives on the site and quickly selects their option and they’re off to the races.
The big thing is distraction. You want to avoid distraction. Two options are okay. Three, probably fine. But the more you add the more difficult and distracting you make it for all visitors.
Tip #5. When Blogging, Use Categories
Another tricky thing is content marketing. We’ll use blogging as the example, but it could be relevant for YouTube or Podcasting or Social Media or whatever.
You want to create content for all of your audiences, but you want to organize it.
On your blog you can do this with categories. Create categories for your audiences. Customers, franchisees, etc. Men, Women, Kids, etc. Consumers, businesses, etc.
Whatever it is, use categories to make it easy to quickly find what they’re looking for. YouTube does this with playlists and things like that. Podcast apps are a little behind on this. I wish social media was a little better too, but you can use hashtags specific to your business like #XYZBrandMen and #XYZBrandWomen to help them out.
It’s all about making it easy for your audience to find what they want.
Tip #6. Audit
The final tip I’ll give is to audit what you’re doing every so often. Call it every 6-12 months. Set aside time to reassess your priority list. Then look through your website to see if anything has gotten out of whack. Make changes if you need to and then set a reminder for six months from now to do it again.
It’s not a one and done situation. Things are always fluid and changing in business. We can get into bad habits without even realizing it.
Conclusion
It’s certainly possible for your business to have multiple audiences. It’s a good thing, but it can be a frustrating thing because it presents a challenge for your website. You don’t want to ignore anybody, but you don’t want your best customers to get distracted.
Use the tips above. I’ve found that it works very well and for many businesses. Not just recently, but it’s been working for over a decade. Even as more people browse websites on their smartphones. If they can find what they’re looking for they’re happy. If there are distractions or if information is hidden they leave.