This recipe is meant for cooks that have been working in the kitchen for quite some while. It is about adding more flavors to your food:
Your website is performing to your expectation. It has a clear target market and knows how to attract them. How to further improve?
To answer this question, let us take the example of the social networking website LinkedIn. Their mission is fairly simple; they connect the world’s professionals. They do their jobs well. Extremely well. Founded in 2003, they currently posses a network of 238 million users and generate a revenue of $972 million. Not bad.
Starting on September 2013, LinkedIn broadens its target market. Not only professionals can make use of their services, but also professionals-to-be. Now prospective students in search of the best university for them can look on the University Pages section within LinkedIn. Here they can find current students of their university of interest, and can see in what fields they work in.
By doing so LinkedIn will not only target high-school students, but also their tuition-paying-parents. These parents can be new customers as some of them will not be professionals and will be new to the website. LinkedIn is killing two birds with one stone.
Thereby, LinkedIn is introducing their prospected target market earlier to their site. High-school students will get familiar with LinkedIn and will keep their accounts for later in their carriers.
Personally, I believe this new target market will be a great success. First of all, they attracting the generation that will become their future target market. Additionally, they are involving parents of teens, who can in turn also be new potential customers. LinkedIn can also think about partnering with university ranking websites such as www.topuniversities.com, www.shanghairanking.com and www.qs.com. The site will also strengthen ties with learning institutions. These will have a higher chance of becoming premium customers, as they will be actively looked for. It also motivates universities, schools and other learning organisations that are not yet active on LinkedIn to create an account.
To who will you sell next?
Your marketing chef