Target Audience

[rafterman]

I tried looking around a bit, but found no answer, so I figured I would ask here. I'm promoting products from revenuewire like spyware doctor and xoftspy, so, antivirus/antispyware software and I made a website, www.cleanatrojanvirus.com/ I made a few sales, 3 to be exact, (aka I haven't gotten paid yet) but I was wondering, who is my target audience? Not those computer savvy enough to go the long way and remove spyware themselves obviously? Housewives? Or better yet, who is buying this software? Someone has to be buying it or these companies would be out business.

So if anybody could help me out with locking in a target audience that would be great.

[billmcintosh]

Here's a great place to start:

pctools.com - Quantcast Audience Profile

You should look up several of the sites that you are promoting and you'll find a lot of information about your market.

Take that and then examine the Google AdWords ads that have been running for a while (not just newcomers, successful advertisers who have stuck with it). You can use a tool like:

SpyFu

[rafterman]

okay, so roughly 75% of their sales, are coming from the 35 - 49 and the 50+, caucasian demographic. It's about 50/50 across the other demos. And I looked at the ads of comparespywareremover.org because they've been advertising for a while according to keywordspy, I had an account with them already, what can I gain from looking at the ad variations that they have been advertising? I really can't rank for keywords like trojan remover, pop up blocker, and malware remover because they have a crazy amount of competing pages? Is there some other ways I can use this information to my advantage?

[billmcintosh]

By looking at what their ads actually say you'll get some insight into what your marketing message (headlines, sales copy, etc...) should say. If they are spending money over time to put those ads up, it's likely they are working.

You'll also know exactly what to say in your own PPC advertising (if you're doing any). It's called the peel and stick method: Just "peel" off their ads, put your URL in it & stick it back up on AdWords. You usually have an instantly successful ad that will get a good click through rate.