Offering something for free is great, and giving away an iPad as an incentive will probably get more people to sign up – but are those gimmicks building your brand and driving the right kind of people to your business?
Relevancy hinges on knowing who you are talking with, not just what you are promoting. Creating offers and incentives which are relevant to the person boost your conversions, and build your brand. But how can you be sure they are relevant?
Again, the question you need to be focusing on: who are you talking with?
Start with the Basics
When it comes to crafting an offer or incentive which is appealing to your audience, start with the top level analysis.
1. The Five W’s of market segmentation (Who, What, When, Where, and Why – we’ll through in “how,” as well)
2. Frame your answers in terms of demographics, psychographics, and online behavior to help answer the questions (we’ll focus on B2B, but keep in mind this is commonly used for B2C, as well).
3. Notice that we’re talking about audience and not customers/clients.
(Offers and incentives might be appropriate with some of your current customers/clients but ultimately online brand visibility and lead generation happen with those who we may not already have relationships with.)
Many of the answers can come from understanding who your current customers/clients are, the hypothetical thinking of who you would like to work with, or the result of an analysis of who is visiting your website using tools such as Google Analytics or LoopFuse.
Answer the Questions
Demographics
Demographics answer three of the five W’s:
Who is your audience in terms of position/job in their organization?
What is the size (both in people and revenue) and type of organization?
Where are they located?
Do you work with primarily Chief Financial Officers in medium sized firms in the southwestern states of the United States? Or junior analysts in large firms in the northeastern states?
These are two very different types of people. Different things will appeal to them.
Psychographics
This gets in to the activities, interests, and opinions (AIOs) of your audience and how you can craft your offers and incentives to appeal to these psychographics.
The questions we are answering here are:
When do they use us?
Why is our audience going to the web?
As human beings, we search for things online when we need to address an immediate need or solve a problem – also known as pain points. It might be an answer to a question, a downloadable resource, or searching for a service which drives us to search on the web. Understanding the answers to these questions come from outlining and understanding the AIO’s, and helps us to create more creative offers and incentives beyond just the free trial or giveaway.
Online behavior
By analyzing online behavior, we are trying to understand how our audience is interacting with us online. What pages are they visiting on our website? What are they searching for? What is the wording which proves to be most engaging? Answering these questions allows you to segment your audience in to more specific groups, and then create the offers and incentives which are more direct connection to your products/services (unless you’re selling iPads).
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the goal of online offers and incentives is to drive interest in your business. By understanding “who”, you can create the offers and incentives which will generate higher conversions, more leads in your pipeline, and get you noticed online. We like that.
NOTE: This blog is brought to you today by Jill Ferris – Marketing Programs Manager at Response Capture, one of our strategic partners. Jill spends her time providing Response Capture customers and prospects with resources for lead generation, conversion, and relationship nurturing efforts. If you have any custom target list and market development needs, or want to really see your landing page conversion soar, contact Jill at Response Capture.