A 90-year old man walks into a bar. The bartender ask to see his ID. The old man laughs and leaves.

A grocery shopper heads directly to the produce section and begins to compare tomatoes. A clerk asks if she needs help choosing a steak. The shopper walks away confused.

Yes, this sounds silly, but what do you say to visitors when the land on your website? More specifically, what do you say if it’s the potential customer’s fourth visit to your website without registering, downloading or taking the specific action you want them to take? Do you continue to deliver the same message every time — the message that has not yet created a positive action? Imagine if you interacted with your customers in this way in the “real world.”

If it was the fourth time a customer had visited your retail location without making a purchase, would you introduce yourself as if you’ve never met? Of course not. Would you tell this potential customer about the same sale to which they’ve responded “no thank you” three times already? Of course not. Your marketing sense wouldn’t let you. However, you likely do this on your website countless time every day. You serve content that is not relevant to what your potential customer is telling you about themselves. Instead your website and your content likely follow the only path available until recently – you targeted your message to the broadest audience possible. That was advertising.

Whether or not you’ve added modern digital media to your marketing plan, you can look around and see that advertising is changing — it is becoming more appropriate to the moment and more relevant to customers’ needs.

Think about two relatively new, huge and highly targeted mediums of mobile and search advertising. Ten years ago these did not exist and they’re already more measurable and much closer to the actual purchase than most of their predecessors who ruled the 20th century and failed to evolve. Take a look at what the Wikipedia reports on the size and growth of the search advertising (SEM) market: “In 2006, North American advertisers spent US$9.4 billion on search engine marketing, a 62% increase over the prior year and a 750% increase over the 2002 year.” That growth and the rapid trial and adoption by businesses powering it are only possible because the platform is targeted and effective.

Now, back to your website. Your messaging is likely designed to communicate with the broadest audience possible. You could say that it’s already targeted, just not relevant to to what your visitors are looking for at that moment. Consider this: instead of saying the same thing to everyone, you can say the appropriate thing to each and everyone who visits your website.

You can combine your marketing skill and understanding of your customers with Smart Content to better engage on your website. It is easy to add to your existing site, it is easy to budget for because it is highly measurable and trial for a specific campaign or program is a great way to dip your toe in the water of targeted messaging. In fact, contact us through the previous link or mention this blog post when you call 512.419.1943 and you’ll be given special trial pricing.

Targeted content is smart because it is relevant content.