While you're researching your target marketing about your site design, find out what they really need. There's no sense in trying to sell golden widgets to people who are gnashing their teeth over the scarcity of green widgets. Visit forums and blogs, read magazines, talk to people. In short, find out what it is that your market needs.
A client from many years ago was a member of a work at home mom knitting crowd. She and her friends knitted wool pants for their babies to wear over cloth diapers. As she was getting to know this market, she realized there was a shortage of really soft, good quality wool.
This client was really good at online research, so she did her homework and found a supplier of wool that met her market's needs. Soon, the word spread like wildfire about her wonderful wool.
My own story is similar. I joined an online parenting group back in 2000 — just after having my son. After several months, I realized a couple of things: I didn't want to lose my writing and design skills that I'd learned from working for newspapers and studying design in college and that my friends were selling cloth diapers and baby slings and they all needed websites. They couldn't afford the big online marketing companies and didn't want to hire complete strangers to build their online presence.
Yep, you guessed it! I taught myself HTML and started building — and later hosting — websites for my community members. As one of them, I understood what they needed, and they trusted me know know what they needed. Soon, the word spread beyond my small online community and people were hiring me from around the world.
The morale of this story: Pay attention to what your target market wants, what they're clamoring for, and what they aren't getting. Then be the person that they trust to provide what they need.
Need help doing this? Check out my mentor, Cindy Bidar's, resources at reThink Your Lifestyle. She's got the zero to six figures training system you need!
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