AP 0870: How Do I Serve Two Specific Audience Segments for My Business?

AskPat 870 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 870 of AskPat. Thank you. And, as always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from James, but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.

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James: Hi, Pat. This is James. I'm in Kentucky. We have a B2B service company ,and we have two main types of clients. They both want roughly the same thing from us, but the reasons why they want them are very different. How would you set up sales pages or back pages and other pages like that when you have two different types of clients that want the exact same thing but their reasons why they want them are very different? Thanks, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, James. Thank you so much for the question. This is interesting because you know on one hand you could create one site and just have things that are universal between the two different sort of avatars here that you're talking about, but honestly, the best thing to do in my opinion—and some people might disagree with this, but I think you can maybe hopefully see where I'm coming from—is to create two completely different websites. Now, I don't want you to be scared about that. It doesn't mean you have to start from scratch and create two different websites from there. I mean, you have a website already that serves these two audiences, but the reason why I say this is because, and I think you've already answered the question yourself, one group responds to one thing and another group responds to another.

If you have both groups on a similar page looking at the same exact copy, you're going to be halfway for each of them, if that makes sense. I would create at least landing pages for each of those groups first and then go from there. It doesn't necessarily need to be two completely different websites, but what I meant by completely different is you want to make sure that they have separate things that they look at, not one thing that they both look at. Now, that doesn't mean you can't give them one page to look at where they can then make a choice to go down one route or another. It might be your homepage, could for example, help you decipher, “okay, which direction should I go?” or help them decide which direction makes sense for them based on that language that you know that they resonate with and the problems that they have.

I don't know exactly what niche it is, so in some cases I can see that working out. Then I can see in some cases having literally two separate websites where yes, the look can be the same. It could go through the same process and sell the same things, but on one website it's very much specifically everything is for that particular group and then on the other website it's everything specifically, even down to the images that are being used to the headlines and the copies or the blog content on there too. You know, it could be done that way also. I think it's really great that you know that there are two distinctive types and I think you can use that to your advantage. Remember, if I'm in group one, I don't really care about group two. I don't necessarily need to know what's going on with that other site. I just need to know what's there for me and take it from there.

Now, this is less common of a question than those who serve businesses and consumers. I know a lot of websites that have, it's just one website and they speak the same language both to business owners and sort of more enterprise level, but also the customer sort of single individual level and at the point of sale where people can choose the package. That's where the branches start kind of going off. You could either choose the individual offer or you can go to the enterprise level from there, but of course they are there, both enterprise and individual clients, for the same reason. But since you know that you're providing the same service for really two different kinds of people, I mean, the riches are in the niches. You just happen to have two different niches, but they're being served with the same product.

I would try and shoot for having two separate experiences for them if possible. You can have them all go to the single homepage and then choose their experience from there, sort of like a “choose your own adventure” book. That's the ideal route. But I understand also that that might not be 100 percent possible, especially when it comes to resources and time and money and effort to put into that. Take it one step at a time. I would map out the entire process if you're going to have separate pages for each of these different groups coming from your single website. Map it out so you know that that experience for that person when they arrive on that page makes sense. You might have different blog posts that relate specifically to one group or the other. You want to make sure that you serve the right ads or right offers for that group of people depending on what that content is and who you know it's for. Again, just being conscious about everything that you're doing and who it's for and making sure that it's honed in as much as possible. You don't want to be half away for each of them. You want to be full on for each of them when it comes to what you say and how you offer your services.

James, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and I want to make sure that I send you an AskPat t-shirt, so you'll hear from my assistant in the next two or three weeks. We'll get that over to you free of charge. Then finally, for everybody else out there, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

As always, I love to end with a quote. This quote comes from William Butler Yeats. That quote is, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” All right, guys, take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.