At any given moment, the majority of your target audience cannot actually buy from your brand.
No matter how effective your messaging is, or how streamlined your conversion pipeline is, nothing can convince somebody to buy something that they don’t need. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Even users who are not “in market” can still be influenced by your brand, and this can affect their purchasing decisions when they do want to buy.
As part of your wider marketing strategy, your website is a key element of this, and can drive long-term brand success if designed correctly.
Who can buy, and when?
Hold on, how do we know that most of our audience cannot buy from our brand?
To take a simple example, let’s consider washing up liquid. When I switch on the TV and see an advertisement for washing up liquid, I typically already have some sitting beside my sink. However, once every few weeks I’ll be about to run out, and will be making a decision on which new type I will purchase. Suddenly, I’m “in market” and an advertisement may influence my buying behaviour.
Feel free to skip over this paragraph if maths isn’t for you, but this phenomenon can be formalised numerically. We calculate this as the lead time (the average amount of time it takes to select and purchase a product in your category) divided by the inter-purchase time (the average frequency at which a user needs a product from your brand's category).
In the case of washing up liquid, that would work out to (roughly) three days divided by three weeks, AKA one seventh. In other words, only one seventh of Fairy Liquid’s audience are “in market” at any one time.
A typical term used to describe this is the “95:5 rule". In other words, the idea that 95% of your audience are “out of market” at any given time. However, as the equation above shows, this figure will change based on your specific industry and your market’s buying behaviour.
Why the 95% matter
It might be tempting to focus entirely on buyers who are in market right now when we market our brand. After all, why waste time targeting those who can’t buy? And there is a grain of truth to this. It is important to chase high-intent users when possible to maximise sales in the short term.
However, this is just half of the picture. Neglecting the 95% means that you fail to expose them to your brand’s value proposition, and lose their limited attention to your more vocal competitors. In the long-run, this leads to a loss of traffic and conversions, as the much larger market of future buyers choose other solutions when they eventually enter the market.
How your website can make the difference
So how do you make an impression on this out-of-market audience? There’s a lot of options here (such as the TV advertisements mentioned above), but at Kooba we focus on your website. The goal of most websites is to convert as many users as possible, but this shouldn’t detract from the need to provide a useful and positive experience for the audience members who aren’t ready to convert right away. By keeping these users in mind, we help your business maximise leads in the long-term.
At Kooba, there’s several ways we accomplish this:
Useful content
When users enter a website without seeking to buy, they are typically seeking information about your brand, products and services. A good website will help them access useful and relevant content that portrays your business in a positive light, and makes your brand memorable and desirable in the future.
We accomplish this via the creation of content pages and formats that align with your marketing needs and the interests of your users, and by implementing a user-friendly CMS that lets your team quickly publish content at scale.
A positive user experience
More broadly, we’ll create a user experience that reflects the quality of your brand itself. A beautiful and engaging website can be genuinely enjoyable to use, and will make visitors feel comfortable about returning in the future.
Think about this like a digital shop, where the experience of browsing itself can be a factor in your decision to return.
Quality performance and accessible design
Related to this, everything on your website should work as your users expect it to. That means that your website loads quickly, provides information in a logical, intuitive way, and accommodates every user to a high standard.
This not only requires efficient web development, but also the consideration of digital accessibility. A logically coded and semantic website will be more usable and functional, for all of your users. This further increases the likelihood of a positive brand impression and future return visits.
Conclusion
A good website won’t just improve conversion rates in the short term, but will also improve lead generation sustainably over time. By building an experience that works for both in-market and out-of-market users, you can appeal to all of your audience, all of the time.
To learn more about creating a website that makes a tangible difference for your business, just get in touch with the team at Kooba today.
