One of the most important things that you can do when initially attempting to identify and focus in on a given websites core demographics is to think outside the box. The immediate, common sense answer will always be there. For instance, in regards to kids websites, one would immediately assume that the core demographic would be kids, correct?
This isn’t to say that the obvious demographic that initially jumps out at you is wrong or not lucrative. No, it’s just that there are very few places across the World Wide Web which cater specifically to one single demographic only.
So let’s go ahead and try to think outside the box in regards to potential demographics for these aforementioned kids websites, shall we?
Who do we think would be on a kids website besides kids? Well, one core group certainly comes to mind now that we take a step back and think on it, don’t they? That’s right. Parents. Depending on the more specific sub-group of our main demographic (we’ll talk more about this in a moment), we could be dealing with kids who can barely use a computer at all!
So how are they going to be able to enjoy a website for children if they can’t even barely use a computer yet?
Exactly! Their parents!
Now we can take our outside the box thinking a few steps further. Let’s say for the sake of brevity that this theoretical kids website we’ve been talking about is indeed mainly targeted towards, say… preschool aged kids. Now that we’ve established that there is indeed going to be parents or guardians involved in the browsing or access of this website, we can now try and identify what type of advertisements would appeal to them the most.
For starters, you’d imagine that anything parenting related would be effective, right? And since we’ve established that these kids are too young to even use a computer by themselves, they surely can’t call up or purchase their own toys and such, correct? So we could now seriously start considering advertising popular or intriguing preschool-aged toys, apparel, etc.
You see how easy it is to get falling down the proverbial rabbit hole? It’s certainly not as hard as most folks imagine it to be, is it?
As we talked about earlier, the specific main sub-group of a particular website can usually clue us in on and point us in the right direction in regards to identifying or discovering other potential demographics to target. Let’s say that, theoretically, the site we were just talking about was instead targeted towards pre-teens. Kids who could conceivably use a computer on their own only after everything was setup and laid out by a parent/guardian.
In what scenario or mindset would the parents of these children access the website? If they even gave their blessing in the first place, it’s probably likely that said website is educational. And as many educational kids websites are setup these days, it’s essentially two separate sections of the same domain. One for the kids complete with learning tools and games and such, and one for the parents, complete with suggestions, recipes or even a discussion forum or sounding board for like-minded adults.
In this case, products or services that would help supplement or bolster the education or development of the children would no doubt be of great interest to these parents. As would anything having to do with discounts, coupons or just saving money in general.
It’s no secret how expensive having a young child in the house can be for a whole host of reasons and maybe this particular sub-set of parents could even tend to have more than one child on average. Yes, statistical visitor data for websites goes that deep and can be that specific.
As we’ve just outlined, however, identifying and discovering potential advertising opportunities for kids websites (or any websites) isn’t very difficult. It does take a bit of effort and empathy in putting yourself in the shoes of the potential group of people that a particular site caters to, but just think outside the box and you’ll be just fine!