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Your Target Customer on the Internet
A Guide to the Internet article
Your advertising targets a certain type of person. How can you target that person using the
Internet?
"A Marketer's Dream"
The Internet is home to millions of "virtual communities:" people with similar consumer profiles
who find each other through their shared interests. Some have termed the Internet "a marketer's
dream." It allows your business to target a very specific type of customer by tapping into the
right common-interest community.
Products and Customers
Experience is showing that certain products sell better on the Internet. These include books,
computers, software, and apparel.
More importantly, though, experience is showing that certain types of customers buy more on the
Internet. Whether or not your product or service will sell on the Internet depends not so much on
the product as on the customer. Is your customer on the Internet?
Customer Profiles
Your success will come through knowing more about your customer than your competition knows. In
general, we know the following about Internet consumers:
- 80% have some college education
- 58% are married
- 44% are parents
- 97% have computers at home
- 62% use a computer primarily for entertainment
- 74% purchase online with credit cards1
How to Learn about Your Customer
The Internet abounds with research about online consumers. Good sources include: Forrester
Research (www.forrester.com), Greenfield Online
(www.greenfieldonline.com), and NUA
(www.nua.com).
You have another excellent source of Internet consumer research available to you, one that is
100% customized for your business: your own Web site! Your Web site, if set up properly, can log
every single visit made to it. From that log, you can know:
- The general geographic locations of your customers
- Which search engines are sending customers to you
- How long customers stay at your site
- Which products are most frequently sought
- Bottlenecks that keep customers from purchasing
That's not all. Using your Web site, you can gather e-mail addresses of your customers and
provide them with an online newsletter -- all with no printing or mailing costs. You can also allow
your customers a method of providing feedback to you through your Web site.
Your own Web site has endless potential as a market research tool. Talk with ActivePage Design
to learn more. For now, ActivePage Design has compiled three consumer profiles to help you:
Profile: Generation X
Generation X-ers, the 20- to 30-year-olds, are doing the most online buying today.
Many of today's Generation X were introduced to the Internet in college. Because they learned
the Internet when they were younger, members of Generation X are more comfortable in purchasing
online -- and comfort is one of the main determinants of propensity to buy online. Youth under 20
are also highly comfortable with the Internet, but they are limited in their online purchasing,
both by budget and by parents.
Profile: Senior Citizens
Senior citizens compose the consumer group most overlooked by Web marketers. Before you dismiss
them, consider:
- 92% of seniors with Internet access have shopped online
- 78% have purchased online
- People over 55 have a greater tendency to make purchases online than their under-55 counterparts
- Seniors on the Internet have more money to spend2
What this means for you is that, while fewer seniors are on the Internet, they tend to buy more
often and spend more money on what they buy.
Profile: Businesses
While you're thinking about all those new customers who will buy from you because of your
Internet presence, don't forget business-to-business e-commerce. Businesses will interact with
their suppliers, buyers, and partners more and more over the Internet. According to a Goldman,
Sachs & Co. report cited by NUA, "small businesses are expected to be a key driver in this sector"
(Sept. 17, 1999). Consider possible business customers for your products and services.
1. Greenfield Online, "Digital Living Room Consumer Index."
2. NUA Internet Surveys.
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