Don’t Forget These Audiences: Media & Your Competitors

In our last lesson we covered standard audience profiles that every corporate website should consider.

In this final lesson we’re going to look at two groups that are often forgotten: media (the press), and your competitors.

Let’s get started.

Media (The Press)

Positive media coverage can be a boon for business. (That’s why public relations firms exist!) If your company gets coverage, the media will look for succinct information about the business. They want assets that’ll give them everything they need to cover the company. Help them do their job.

Action Item:

Create a Media Kit or Press page that includes:

  • Downloads for brand assets & guidelines.
  • Executive headshots.
  • High-level descriptions of the company and its core businesses.

Check out Facebook and Apple for inspiration.

Competitors

Your competitors are watching you. Never forget that. Any information on your website is readily available to them.

Is that a bad thing? It’s up to you. It depends on the business that you’re in and how transparent you want to be.

Your goal for this audience is different from the rest. Use this group as a sanity check on what you’re creating. “Are we comfortable with our competitors having access to this information?” is a reasonable question to ask when building a corporate website.

Action Item:

Check out your competitors websites. Can you determine which audiences they’re targeting? Are there opportunities you’re missing?

Go a step further. Use monitoring tools to keep track of updates to your competitors’ sites.

Recap

Understanding your audiences is a crucial part of building a corporate website. In this lesson, we identified six general audience groups:

  • Leads: Understand what problems they need to solve and sell solutions to them.
  • Existing Customers: Support them and keep them coming back for more.
  • Internal Stakeholders: Build the site to help them do their jobs.
  • Partners: Give them confidence in your company, offer ways to request information.
  • Media: Provide brand assets and guidelines.
  • Competitors: Know that they’re keeping tabs on your site, so keep tabs on theirs too.

Use these as a starting point for building your site’s own audience profiles. Every bit of content — every page, every post — should have one of these audiences in mind.

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