Web Psyche

Web Market
Segmentation

Marketing in a Virtual Environment

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You're trying to figure out who your market is and what they want. The web doesn't help because all web users are anonymous. How are you ever going to know what your market is thinking and know what they want from you? You are trying to get a profile of your market and you don't know where to start.

A psychological profile of your web market is an important first step as it helps to define characteristics of your market. Using this knowledge allows you to design a site that meets a comfort level with your market and talks about what interests them.

Many business owners don't really know who their web market is and so they simply market to everyone. There is an expression that says, "When you market to everyone, you are marketing to no one." There is this fantasy about web marketing that claims you are able to market to the world, and yet even common sense suggests that you need to narrow down the target market in order to know what to say to them.

If you know who your web market is then you know how they think
You're smart, you are intelligent and yet you can't seem to get a picture of your web market. Maybe you should go psycho instead. Forget logic and analysis for a moment. Try feeling your way around. What were you feeling when you first developed your product or your services? What was the problem you were trying to solve? Were you excited when you were getting close to the perfect solution? What do members of your market have in common?

Have you got a picture of yourself developing an exciting solution? Who is that solution for? Keep it simple, after all a bandaid is for anyone with a cut finger. Who is your market?

If you're still having trouble then send your questions to Web Psyche. You'll find help.

Although you need to become popular with your market first, once you feel ready you can opt in for a more automatic system of marketing. Web technology is far more reaching, in business terms, than any other technology. It reaches people where they live and work and play. No other medium has that kind of reach. But don't spend the money right away. Too many small business owners get ahead of themselves and they don't have the popularity to make make it pay.

You may be amused to know that your web market may see your business as a godsend… or simply a fine servant, but either way, you go off and play golf as your web business runs on automatic pilot. Your web site can automate most of itself and also much of your material business. And you will get to play more golf - that is if your ambition to grow more and grow faster doesn't get in the way.

A virtual business and human values
Strangely enough, a virtual reality brings us back to our core values. We are looking to find values of trust and belief for what we are experiencing. People... your market, are looking for values that are similar to their own. That's what they will recognize and when they do they will join groups. It is the same principle behind why people look for their groups on the web... and they find their groups. Your virtual market finds you in this same way, but not because you're using social media, but because you are expressing the same values your market market holds dear.

Your values are now something you can be found by, and search engines will find you. This is not possible in 30 second TV ads. It's not possible in high cost print ads, but the web's search engines change all that. Someone searches for a product like yours but the want to know more about the company. So they include in their search a product and corporate, environmental or social values. Finding the right business has never been so easy, but a business has to express those value to be found in such a search.

Ask anyone if they would like to go back to the early 1990's before the Internet was born. Business was done with phone books, fax machines and copiers. By comparison the Internet, and the web, interact with our material reality like no other medium. It's as though the web swallowed all previous marketing media and then made changes about how they will be used in business or anything else. The web is a virtual environment and that means text, sound, and video all behave differently. Or, to be more precise, it is people that behave differently with the web as earlier mediums all come together in a virtual environment.

You need to know your people, they are your market. Walmart got the slogan right about people but I don't see how this is working for them. Perhaps it's just more low level programming that has effects when it is repeated often enough. This is how our environment programs us. We are in a sea of programming, but we get to pick and choose, sort of. Life is complicated, business is easier.

The most successful business web sites have one thing in common, they all have content that is valuable to their market. Inside your head you already have the web content your web market wants, and we will help you release this info and share it with your market. They will love you for it and be happy to share. Now you're off to the races and success from this point forward is virtually guaranteed when you stick to the plan.

A virtual environment works because people share. Viral marketing only works because people on the web share, and they share what is of value to them. The magic is to find something that your greater web market wants to share about you in some way. Going viral can cause more pain than gain, so let's think about ideas that stay within your niche market and that they find interesting. Let's find things that they will want to share with others so that your growth is manageable.

Whatever else that follows on your web pages can be dictated by the nature of the business. What ever is natural to your business will fit in with a natural marketing method known as Organic Marketing. There's nothing like working with mother nature, I say. Except it seems rather odd to refer to mother nature within digital code, and then again our DNA is a 4 letter digital code. Current computers are a 2 letter digital code of zero and one, on and off. We may think we're pretty smart, but our intelligence is still 2 levels behind mother nature.

The emphasis is on a VIRTUAL BUSINESS rather than just a web site. It is a web site, to be sure, but it is really the automated capabilities of web programming that makes it possible for people to automate much of their lives (chores). In time this will be a splendid investment, but at first we'll stick to the basics.

Getting automated is where you want to end up, but you can't usually start here. First, it is recommended to build your way up. Save the high costs of web programs until you have something to automate.

A company like Amazon spends hundreds of thousands of dollars for their sophisticated and leading edge programming. A lot of the sophisticated programming functions are built as modules and can be turned into a type of plug-in for small business.

For a small business web site the costs could start at about $5k to $10k to automate by a freelance programmer. This would get the business set up and the ongoing costs would be server fees and the marketing that takes place beyond the web site. In any case, it is wise to start small and build your web business without going down a dead end path with functions you may never need. A dead end is most often what is found in template designs when they do not have a structure that is flexible enough. In fact, starting over with a new web site structure can happen early on because of a poor choice, or you can talk a business language and figure out most of it in advance.

The extra advantage in building a virtual business web site is that it exceeds the needs of your material markets. I shouldn't tell you this as it may frighten you to know that almost all business web sites, big and small, do not exceed the needs of their material market, let alone their virtual market.

Pull marketing strategies build psychological values into your web site that attract your market. The search engines do the rest and your site is found by a market looking for all of the things they want that your business represents. In other words, your business is marketed in 3 categories of keywords at once.

1. Your values
2. Your unique & original business
3. Your products and services

Have you signed up for a personal page for Facebook? Do you have a twitter account? Have you spent time keeping up with others on facebook?

It's a lot of work if it isn't fun for you. If it's fun then you won't mind keeping your facebook page up to date and communicating with your market. But watch what you say!

In reality, though, chasing after attention through Facebook or Twitter is not your best choice when it comes to time and energy.

The time & energy you might spend in social websites learning the ropes there arises the question... "Why would you want to piggyback on Facebook or Youtube when you could take a page out of their book?" Why not use the same principle of web networking that social media uses and create your own marketing network. Your network will not be as vast as Facebook or Youtube, and this is a good thing because your small business couldn't handle and process that kind of volume. At least not right away.

The 3 most important reasons for creating your own marketing network are:

1. It will be your own network that grows naturally and without any competition*
2. You can build a network of buyers to sell to over, and over
3. It costs a fraction of the amount paid out for traditional marketing

*Competition will eventually show up, it always does, but you will already have more than your share of the market, and your keywords will stick with you.

Big business is not your competition. In fact, it looks like you don't have any competition when you market yourself as a unique business owner. Who has a business that is exactly like yours - with you in it? If you understand this and you know that search engines are specifically designed to ferret out unique and original information then you just need to put two and two together. Why finance a fight to win a slim slice of "common" - when you can have "unique" all to yourself?

Many web marketers tell you that you must compete for the popular search terms to get enough traffic. Getting traffic, they say, is how your web site makes sales. This is true to an extent, but the visibility to attract those huge traffic volumes is going to cost you a lot, and it's going to cost you every month. Are you sure you want to wade into this level of marketing because there is only room for the top 10 to be visible? On the other hand, marketing for your unique quality and value can put your name at the top of Google's search return page. This is not the hot popular search terms, but it is yours to own and it attracts mature clients that have tried everything to find you.

Common Competition

To compete you have to abandon your unique product or service descriptions and bid for popular (common) keywords. For all practical purposes your web site cannot get in the top 10 with common search terms because the competition is fierce. You could consider calling in the expert SEO guys to boost your site with Google for more visibility, and it all helps, but you are still not marketing who you really are - and this is the biggest disadvantage of all.

When you think about it, your biggest advantage is who you are and what your unique business represents. Let's get you back on target using your advantages. It costs less and it feels natural. Just one step at a time.

If you want to market your unique business and products in a marketing medium where everyone is anonymous and where they are in control, then the logical process would be to attract them based on what they want and what they like to have. Trying to chase an invisible market is not a very workable plan. And yet this is what most marketing people suggest when they recommend advertising.

Now, don't get me wrong, advertising has the advantage of generating nearly instant results, but your web site needs to be ready before that can happen. If your business web site is not prepared to do business then it is better off being invisible, and while it is invisible a few things can be fixed and made to work.

 

There are 2 general concepts for marketing, one is PUSH and one is PULL. It's best to have a plan and stick to one or the other. Mixing them doesn't work, as a rule, because one method undermines the other. It's all a matter of preference, that's true, but it is your first choice. Get this wrong and you'll have nothing but problems.

If you are going to push then push hard. Spend your money on advertising that generates visibility and targeted traffic. Have someone in the business learn how, or hire an expert to teach your company about web marketing. Push marketing is generally ignored on the web by all markets, and yet, PPC advertising can more than pay for itself in sales. But, if you come up short when you push it's a big waste of time and money.

If you are going to use PULL marketing it's like stepping out of competition and going your own way. It can be lonely at first because you might miss all that action and risk in push marketing, and you want to get back in the crowd… or do you?

Pull marketing uses your unique business as a value added source for products or services. It just means that your unique and original business has something more to offer. You will do business with people you like, people who think like you and find your business attractive. Pull marketing is about attracting business, not chasing after it.

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