With taxes, some family health issues and a touch of burnout, I haven’t been on my “A” game lately (or keeping on track with this project).
My new example “guitar site” is bringing in some sales – but not what I want or expect after Undercover Profits pointed out what to promote (no problems there).
When writing copy, we have to make assumptions about the audience we’re writing to – and clearly, I don’t know the audience very well!
Here’s my assumption about who plays guitar and looks for lessons online:
- Male
- 16-24
- Single
- High School or some college education
- No children
- Income under $24,000 per year
Accordingly, I took the “learn to play guitar and have all of the women you want” route.
Later in this post, I’ll reveal a new resource that gave me a VERY different picture of who I’m writing to – and how I’ve been writing my copy is WAY off target.
In fact, I’m so far off target that split-testing would be a waste of time – split-testing is a great thing we should all be doing, but if your initial premise stinks then everything you try is going to stink.
Before you can hit a ball out of the park you have to BE IN THE PARK.
So, here’s what I found by doing some demographic research on who visits the site of the product I’m promoting.
- Sex: Male (the only thing I got right)
- Average age: 35-65+ (my guessed age group is LESS likely to visit this site and my 35-65+ demographic probably isn’t interested in becoming a rockstar sex symbol)
- Marital status: Married
- Education: No college/undergrad degree
- Children: Yes
- Income: 24-60K
With this information in front of me, I can take a better educated guess – these are guys with some money spend (from steady jobs), they’re middle aged and they have families at home.
Playing guitar is a hobby and a passion – not a way to pick up chicks (as it were for me back in the day).
The tool that gave me all this terrific FREE info is http://quantcast.com
Since conversion IS the most important aspect of marketing, knowing who you’re promoting to is VITAL.
USE THAT TOOL.
.X.
