From my experience mentoring entrepreneurs and small businesses of all shapes and sizes, I’m willing to guess it’s not nearly as intimate and internalized a relationship as it should be.
It’s crucial that every business whole-heartedly understands their target audience—their customer’s deepest desires, wants, fears and needs.
Understanding your customer not only saves you time from marketing to the wrong people, it also allows you to create more IMPACT in the lives of those you work with. And that means your most successful, fulfilling and profitable business yet.
Ready to get to know your ideal client? Here’s everything you need to get started:
Start to understand your target audience by painting a picture of what your ideal client does on a daily basis. Pretend you are an author writing a new novel or a screenwriter drafting a film to create the detailed life story of your client. Peek inside their day-to-day existence.
A few overarching questions to consider include:
What problems or obstacles does your target client face? What are they seeking solutions to? What brings your customer joy and happiness? What do they value above all else?
To help you answer those questions, I suggest outlining what your target customer does on a routine basis. Think about:
As you can see, you can get super detailed here. Don’t stop with the questions above—keep diving into the head of your customer until you feel as close to them as your best friend or family member.
I always suggest taking the time to RESEARCH the answers to these questions, rather than simply guessing what you think they might be.
Conduct interviews. Send a survey to your e-mail list. Ask the right questions to the right people—and keep it super niche. The more information you gather here, the easier the next step will be.
Now that you have heaps of information about your target audience, it’s time to create a Buyer Persona (sometimes also referred to as a client avatar).
A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data.
Since you already gathered all of the data you need in Step One, now all you have to do is organize and assemble it.
Think about writing a biography or a dating profile to summarize who they are, what matters to them, what they are looking for, what they do for fun…all of the deepest wants and desires you identified in Step One. You’ll also want to include a stock photo and basic information such as height, weight and eye color—details to make them seem like a real, breathing person.
If you really want to take it to the next level, you can even create a Pinterest Mood Board specifically for your target customer. I am obsessed with Pinterest for client branding. It allows me to fully understand the essence of my client and their product, and then to incorporate this into their comprehensive branding strategy. The same technique can be used for getting into the head of your ideal client and internalizing who they are and what they love.
HubSpot has an excellent free template you can use to create your Buyer Persona. I recommend downloading it and using it as a guide to help you in this process.
Finally, don’t hesitate to create more than one Buyer Persona if you feel it allows you to more closely relate to and understand your target audience.
Once you have your Buyer Persona, you’ll find it is much easier to market to the right people who already WANT and NEED what you have to offer.
Now that you are talking to your target audience, there is one more detail to consider: Where is this person in their Buyer’s Journey?
Many of you may know that I have a background as a social worker. During this time in my life, I worked with people suffering from mental illness, chronic health problems, substance dependence…I quickly learned that I had to meet these people where they were on their journey. Not wherever I wanted them to be. Not wherever I saw they could be. Exactly where they were at that point in their life.
The same is true for your ideal client. Some of them will be willing to buy from you right away. Others may take more time as you nurture your relationship with them. The key is to get them in the door, seeing and feeling the results + benefits that you can offer.
The more accurate your buyer persona, the easier it will be to understand where your customer is on their Buyer’s Journey.
Tap into your ideal client’s deepest wants, needs and desires. You’ll make more money and more impact by marketing to the RIGHT people who desperately want your product or services.
What tips do you have for getting to know your target customer? What greatest struggles do you face? Share your experiences in the comments below!
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