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Getting to know your ideal customer
Do you know who your ideal client is? No, the answer is not everyone that comes through the door and hands you money!! There’s a bit more to it than that – and it’s a big help in making sure your marketing ROI is on point.
Identifying and considering your ideal customer is something that can so easily get overlooked once you’re in the thick of doing business and caught in the pattern of reactively servicing the clients who walk in your door. What we’re going to talk about today is proactively looking at who you want to do business with. Working with those fun, easy to please, pay-on-time clients is the sweet spot. Who wouldn’t want more of them?! When you work with people who are a good fit for you, you’re going to give them better outcomes – it’s that simple. Win and win!
WHY?
Bringing this back to you as the business owner, it’s so valuable to take a step back and remember why you are in business. What service did you set out to provide? Where does your passion lie? Who are you out to serve?
Example – Tina is a specialty baker in the business of selling cakes and her “why” is to help people share the joy of their special occasions. Baking makes Tina happy; she loves sweet foods and cake absolutely lights her up. By knowing her why, she can keep to her core passion and excel at what she does – while delivering an awesome product. Tina’s decided what her niche is, and she sticks to it, rather than bending to unreasonable clients who spoil her job or product quality.
HOW?
Once you’ve identified why you do what you do, knowing who wants/needs your service or product is the next step. I can hear you through the computer – “But everyone needs my service”. While that might be true, there are clients out there who are going to be easier to sell to or service, and who will love what you do and make your workday a dream. Those are the people we’re talking about.
To work out who those people are, we are looking at marketing demographics – age, gender, location (the stats), plus generational characteristics. Generational characteristics are useful because people who go through similar times in history have a predisposition towards certain traits. This is because, anatomically, our brain generally fully matures in our mid-20’s (specifically, the pre-frontal cortex). Half of our adult “personality” tends to be made up of our experiences from ages 0-18, and the other half from ages 18-25. Therefore, what we experience during that 18-25 period generally segments one generation from the next as our adult “personality” comes to full maturity – most often away from parental influence and more aware of the world around us.
We also want to consider psychographics - this is how our ideal clients think and feel, the emotional side of the need we’re fulfilling. It encompasses their motivations in general, as well as their motivations behind making a purchase. What is it that brings them to point of purchase, and what’s the decision making process and drivers that tip them over?
Example –Tina’s ideal client might look something like this…
Demographics: Females (often mothers) aged 20-55 years, located in Mackay region (Tina doesn’t post her cakes – for obvious reasons!), generational characteristics include trends of cake flavours and styles from the various generations (colourful and sweet for children’s birthday cakes, crowd pleasing sponge cake for Grandma’s 100th birthday).
Psychographics: These females are looking to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones within their family/friend group – they are looking to make the occasion special and memorable. So helping to create a special/memorable experience will drive their financial decision making.
WHERE?
How do you actually find out who your ideal client might be, other then hypothesising? Well, if you are an established business/currently in business, you should hopefully already have a few favourite clients that are fun to work with, value your service and pay on time – model your ideal customer from them! You can also go deeper and survey them. A simple chat over the phone or next time they are in your office can clarify for you why they like dealing with you. You can also send out a client survey or use email data mining to find out more about them and if they have any pain points or general feedback.
Don’t disregard the clients or jobs you don’t love. These are an opportunity to review patterns in those difficult jobs and look at where you might be able to improve on your customer journey and/or the way you do business. Remember, there are always two sides to a story!
If you’re at that exciting stage of kicking off your new business (congrats!), then you might look at data mining. Do some research and seek out some Facebook or LinkedIn groups that you might find people looking for/talking about the industry/service you provide. This is a great spot to see who is there, what they are looking for and possibly what feedback they have on your competitors. This will help you work out how you want to do business but most importantly map out your ideal client so you can target them going forward.
Example – If Tina was just starting out, we’d recommend she check out the Facebook group ‘Mums and Bubs of Mackay & The Whitsundays’. This is where she’d find females looking for birthday cake inspo, and having conversations about who they recommend and why. She might even find great tips/trends on what styles her ideal client is looking for so she can better cater to them, as well as learn what bug bears people have had with other suppliers, so she can learn from their mistakes.
Ok yes, we admit it – in marketing we regularly typecast people. We’re putting people into labelled boxes but, by doing this, you can get a clearer picture of who you want to target your precious marketing time and money towards. Target markets are just guidelines, promise.
We guarantee that if a male walks into Tina’s bakery looking to order a cake to celebrate his anniversary with his wife, she won’t turn him away for not being her ideal client! But if she gets someone enquiring about a wedding cake order, she might just pass on that job since she can’t stand the pressure of working with bridezillas, and the stress that type of work brings.
Ultimately, the point of this exercise is to evaluate who your ideal client is – so that you can tailor your marketing efforts to getting more of them. Simple, right?