Expand Your Target Audience and Niche to Increase Your Sales and Website Visits: Here’s How to Do It Right

The Easy Way to Get 1 Million Website Visitors and Increase Sales is a short series of articles designed for entrepreneurs, influencers, and professionals aiming to enhance their online presence and increase their sales. This series provides actionable strategies for you to: 1. Drive significant traffic to your website to boost sales. 2. Master techniques for ranking higher on Google and other search engines. (And) 3. Effectively use keywords to attract more potential customers. Subscribe to stay up to date on the newest articles in this series. This guide is written by Jermaine Reed, MFA, an educator and the editor-in-chief of this site.

Had I known at the beginning of my publishing journey what I know now, I would have quadrupled my sales, along with the number of visitors to my website. So, you’re trying to drive traffic to your website or, specifically, your online store, and you’ve been told you need to “find your target audience and identify your niche.” So, you’ve identified a small group to market to. You’ve poured all of your resources into a marketing campaign directed at your perceived target audience. You’ve done this to get eyes on your site in an attempt to sell products or services, but all you’ve gotten is a flat line of visitors. To get more website visitors, it is more effective to broaden your target audience and niche, contrary to what some will tell you. Here’s how and why you should broaden your target audience and niche to get more website visitors.

How to Build a Wider Target Audience

When I first began publishing books and content teaching how to perfect writing and communication skills, I envisioned my audience as being American, beginning writers, maybe ages 18 — 40ish, with dreams of publishing a book one day, and I was right to an extent, but my hyperfocus on finding and marketing to my perceived target audience and niche actually caused me to miss my broader audience. I also misunderstood what I was offering my audience.

Having been formally educated among other writers and graduating with an MFA in Creative Writing, I had a very strict idea of what a writer was and who would be looking for effective communication guidance. I figured many of those people would be writers like me, but writers are just a small group interested in leveraging their written communication skills to boost their careers. People seeking to hone their writing skills, publish books and create successful content come from all over the world, even if I am in a different country.

You must also reevaluate what you’re doing and reshape your messaging.

At the beginning of my publishing career, I thought I was offering people guidance on perfecting their writing. What I was really doing was teaching my audience to develop effective content, successfully promote their products and increase their sales by driving traffic to their websites. I was also teaching a separate audience of career seekers how to build strong résumés and communication techniques to get interviewed or promoted.

Regardless of what I was teaching any demographic, at the end of the day, I was giving them demonstrable strategies to grow in any way they truly wanted to. That’s what I’ve been intentionally doing since reflecting on my messaging and understanding what I’m truly offering. You must also reevaluate what you’re doing and reshape your messaging so that it accurately reflects what your audience will get if they spend their money or time on your website. You also need to know your audience beyond who you assume they are. According to Keap.com, “there can be more clearly defined messaging that appeals to each group” when you perform market segmentation.

“Market segmentation” is simply breaking your target audience down into meaningful subgroups. There are four main types of market segmentation listed below from the ReferralCandy blog. These will be covered more in depth in a separate article that’s part of this series.

For entrepreneurs, supervisors, managers or anybody who has to communicate in writing, the skills of revising, editing and proofreading are essential. When a supervisor has to send a detailed email to their team, one grammatical error could have their whole team laughing behind their back at the water cooler. What’s more, anybody who owns a business needs a website. To attract and retain customers, websites need clean, error-free content, and the site itself needs to be the same way. While there are Ai tools that can assist the supervisor or business owner in cleaning up written communications, content or websites, Ai tools and autocorrect apps still make errors.

… when it comes to the more technical rules of English writing, even the algorithmic bots we employ can make errors similar to those of humans.

Writer Daniel Felix notes, “One of the most common issues with AI-generated content is its lack of a nuanced understanding of context.” As an example, while grading one of my students’ English-101 research essays, I wrote, “Remember to indent every body paragraph.” The autocorrect tool highlighted my sentence and incorrectly suggested, “Remember to indent everybody paragraph.” The word “everybody” does not reflect “every body paragraph”. A “body paragraph” is any paragraph between the introduction and conclusion paragraphs of an essay. The autocorrect tool did not make this distinction. As demonstrated, when it comes to the more technical rules of English writing, even the algorithmic bots we employ can make errors similar to those of humans.

That in mind, I spent more money than I should have marketing my books and website to what I thought was my target audience. In my organic sales, though, I saw people from China, India and Canada were buying my books and visiting my website. Also, business owners and seasoned professionals, along with those just entering the workforce, showed up to get their own copies of my books. I had a target audience I hadn’t even considered.

Finding Your Target Audience and Finding Your Niche

Write down who you think your target audience is. It doesn’t have to be an exact science, but consider their nationality, age, gender identity and life circumstances. Think about what they probably do for a living, why they would even entertain buying anything from you and, if they landed on your site, what got them there. Think about what they must be looking for.

Now, think about what you offer and who, outside of your self-identified target audience, could benefit from whatever you’re offering. This is something that I did not do early on, and had I done so, I would have been able to make the link between my own products and the interested potential customers I was missing. The visitors to my website would have quadrupled with my sales, as they did after I revised my strategy.

When defining your niche or target audience, do not be as restrictive to who you market to as some would suggest.

For instance, if you are a fitness trainer, you probably coach fit people who show up to the gym. These are people actively finding their way to the gym, and you market to them because they are likely to use your services. Although this is an acceptable technique, it’s one being used by your competition as well. So, you have to identify who else you can market to that will likely use your fitness services.

Another demographic who might be interested in getting fit are those newly concerned about their health or newly health conscious. With the right marketing, you will attract them by tapping into their hesitations and motivations. You’ll let them know you understand how hard the journey ahead seems but they have nothing to worry about because you’ll be there with them. This message is emotionally effective and will attract more customers your way who don’t fit the average build of a gym rat.

Pay attention to who visits your website because these numbers don’t lie.

When defining your niche or target audience, do not be as restrictive to who you market to as some would suggest. Anything you’re selling is beneficial to multiple demographics if your messaging is effective. You have to connect the dots between what you’re offering and who wants it. Do not be country-restrictive. Market where your services or products are appreciated.

Pay attention to who visits your website because these numbers don’t lie. My analytics told me I had a strong presence in highly populated countries such as China and India. It took me longer than it should have to realize I also should include these countries in my marketing campaigns. Even if you don’t have an international presence, market outside of your own country.

The Takeaway

I spent an excessive amount of time and money marketing to my target audience when I should have been reshaping my messaging and connecting with other demographics within my target audience. Although some will tell you to make your target audience as strict as possible, the better idea is to broaden your target audience. This means going beyond who you assume will buy your products or services and finding audiences in other demographics you least expected. Sharpen your message, examine your website traffic and figure out that key group you’re missing, and make them part of your marketing campaign.

Thanks for reading. Subscribe to this site to receive updates on the newest articles in the series The Easy Way to Get 1 Million Website Visitors and Increase Sales. Email the editor-in-chief at TheReedersBlock@reedersblock.com with any questions or comments.