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Narrow Your Focus to Broaden Your Sales
Article by Michel Fortin

If your online business or web site targets everyone, then your marketing message must be therefore painted with broad brushstrokes in order to appeal to everyone. And the challenge with such an approach is the fact that you will lose a greater percentage of visitors.

While they may fall into your target market, visitors that leave are those who likely feel left out or become uninterested fast. And there are other who will simply choose a competitor that might provide them with greater perceived value since it caters to them specifically.

In the competitive marketplace of the new millennium, the demand for specialized products or services will increase. If your site sells everything but the kitchen sink, chances are that your audience will not perceive a value in shopping from you any greater than from anyone else.

Remember that price is never an issue -- it is the value behind the price that is. And if your value is perceived as equal to that of others, naturally the cheapest alternative will win.

Many business owners tend to fall into the "trying-to-be-all- things-to-all-people" trap. And being all things to all people is not a bad concept -- of course you will likely stumble onto people who will take a risk and respond to your offer with such an approach. But what's bad is the fact you must generate a fairly large quantity of hits to produce a satisfactory result.

The number of sales you can generate will increase dramatically if your site is narrowly centered on a specific theme, idea, or outcome. Conversely, the need to produce a sufficient quantity of web site visitors to produce similar results will lessen considerably.

To illustrate, let's say that your best client is the corporate executive earning $50,000 or more and that your site receives 200,000 hits per month. If your site's message aims for the public at large, there will only be a small percentage of that ideal market that will hit your site.

For the sake of example, let's say that the percentage is 0.1%. That means that, out of 200,000 visitors, only 200 will be executives. And since your site is too general or too vague, an even smaller percentage of those 200 executives -- say, 0.5% -- will be interested in your offer and eventually buy. In this case, 0.5% would equal to a mere client for an entire month.

Looking at it in reverse, it means that, if you want to achieve at least 1 sale a day from this ideal market, your site will thus require 6 million hits per month. Stated differently, it means that you will have to laboriously (and expensively) multiply your promotional efforts.

Now take the example of another web site dedicated exclusively to corporate executives earning over $50,000. This site however receives only 5,000 hits per month -- agreeably, it's not a whole lot, especially when compared to the other. But the percentage of those visitors falling into one's target market will be 100% in this case -- that's a 10,000% improvement.

Furthermore, the percentage of interested leads that are in a much better position to buy will be far higher by virtue of the fact that the site caters to their specific needs, goals, and concerns. To be conservative, let's say that this percentage is only 5%. It means that, out of 5,000 hits per month, one can achieve 250 sales -- that's 8 times more than the other.

The beauty of it all is the fact that it took an equal if not lesser investment of time, effort, and money to achieve 8 sales per day than it did to achieve a single one. Therefore, there is much truth to the statement that you will definitely get more with less. By narrowing your market or focus, you are thus broadening your chances of online success.

People often tend to shy away from narrowing their focus, for they feel that, by doing so, they will also narrow their chances of making sales. In the 50's and even in the 80's where competition was considerably less, this fear was indeed justifiable. But in today's over communicated, highly competitive marketplace, nothing can be further from the truth.

The more specialized your site or online business becomes, the more qualified, interested leads will come to you and consequently the more sales you will likely generate.

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