Know Your Audience

Know Your Audience

Last week, I tossed up an article about an online bank that's offering a $50 bonus if you sign up with them and deposit $100 within 14 days. This promotion is going on through August 5th. I was already a member of that bank because I liked the 2.25% APR they give me on my balances, no fees, and I do all of my banking online anyway so I don't need to use a brick and mortar entity.

As such, I knew this bank was legit and the offer was amazing. Who wouldn't want to make a 50% profit on their $100 deposit with literally no work other than signing up for an account, which might take all of 10 minutes to do? Add to that, that you can share this offer with others and, if they sign up and deposit the $100, you get a $50 bonus too!

You can earn up to $10K via this promotion and get entered into a drawing for $50 on top of that. To verify the program actually works I tested it by signing my mother-in-law up for an account. Sure enough, she got the $50 bonus and so did I. Awesome!

I immediately wrote a review post about this bank and the offer and published it on my Small Online Biz website, social media accounts and so on. I even setup several Site Comment requests here at WA, figuring one of our members might read the post and even sign up themselves...

Guess what? Not a single sign up yet. Seriously. I don't know if my readers are just holding off, if my shared link isn't working right, if they're just skeptical or simply not interested, or maybe they think it's too much work for $50, etc.

Yes, the post only went up 4 days ago but I thought I'd get something by now...

This just goes to show you that you may think you know your audience but, in reality, you may not. Perhaps my post would be a better fit for a site about making a quick buck here and there.

So Where Did I Go Wrong?

This is the question I'm asking myself. Here are several others I'm asking as well:

• Is my assumption that my readers would like to make a quick buck wrong?
• Do I give them too much credit when it comes to taking steps to make that quick buck?
• Are they simply not willing or able to transfer $100 to a new account?
• Do they not trust me enough yet to consider my recommendation?
• Are they not even reading my post?
• Am I presenting the information in an offputing way/could I do it better?

and so on.

So, Is it Me or is it Me Not Understanding My Audience?

Now I'm asking you. Please take a look at my article here (I'm not sure if putting it in this post breaks any WA rules. If it does please let me know and I'll remove it.) and let me know your thoughts. What could I do differently/better? How do you feel after reading it? Any advise/constructive feedback is welcome.

I really thought I'd get some conversions on this as it's a no-brainer to me. I was pretty surprised to see that this was not the case.

Thank you,

Scott