How to Define Your Ideal Client
If you try to market to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one. As unfortunate as that may sound, it is overwhelmingly true! At Think Creative I pride myself on creating brands that attract your ideal client or customer in every way. But how do you know who that person is? What do they look like? How will they find you?
I believe in building a company that is built on passion and purpose. The more defined and tight knit that is and the better you communicate it the more your ideal client will naturally come your way. So before we even dive into building up what that person is like, we need to start at the beginning.
Building a Foundation
You must start all the way at the beginning. Who are you? Why did you start your company? What is the passion that drives you to get out of bed?
My Personal Example:
I am Abagail Pumphrey, the Creative Director & Blogger behind Think Creative. I have a passion for helping people. I love uncovering the root of why someone started their business and what passion led them down this path. I believe you have dreams that are worth achieving. I believe you should wake up every day empowered to do and be your best. I started Think Creative because what I wanted out of life wasn’t coming out of my work. For me life and work are intertwined and connected in every way. In the traditional business environment I was giving and giving and people were loving it, but ultimately it wasn’t giving back to me. Now, I have the opportunity to work directly WITH people instead of FOR people.
This sort of statement was not something that came out of thin air and definitely wasn’t something I came up with overnight. It took weeks if not months of reflecting to really uncover my natural purpose to help people do and be their best. I have developed a tool that I believe really has the power to help you begin to uncover this purpose. AND it will help you outline your goals so you can begin going after them. The unique thing about this tool is that it focuses on you and your life first. I believe, much like many of my clients that Faith and Family come before everything else. The life and lifestyle you want to live will define the business you create. If you think of them as two separate things then you will lose sight of the big picture and potentially be unrealistic in your expectations. Receive your FREE Big Picture Strategy Trello Board now and start uncovering the truth.
Do the Research
It is so tempting to just avoid this step and go from passion directly to selling. And honestly I made this same mistake when I started my business. I was too focused on just getting someone in the door that I didn’t care who they were or what they did. Which really was lying to myself. I don’t want to work with just anyone. And neither do you.
If you have an existing business or blog I would suggest starting with Google Analytics. What kind of people are coming to your website? Where are they from? What interests do they have? Are they male or female? In a recent post I walked you through step by step how to utilize analytics.
Here is a little of what my current audience looks like according to Google!
You will notice that I have a much larger female audience. Females also tend to stay on the site longer than men and bounce around more.
Nearly 75% of my audience is between the ages of 25-44 years old.
The 35-44 age group makes up just 24%, however they average more than 30 seconds higher per session than people in the 25-34 age group.
My site has been viewed in 65 different countries, and although the US makes up the majority of traffic, it is only 70% of total traffic. Some of the other high traffic countries are across the puddle in the UK, down under in Australia, just a bit north to Canada and even in Germany.
Think Creative has been read in all states! Whoop! And there is a large focus in the Midwest, which is not shocking being that I do occasionally focus on the amazing city in which I live, Kansas City.
Traffic in Kansas and Missouri do make up around 37% of total traffic, with much higher than average site visits and session duration. However the top session durations belong to Alaska, Rhode Island and New Mexico with ranges from 8:44 minutes to 4:24 minutes.
Getting to know your audience using these tools can be a great first step, but sometimes it doesn’t reveal all the information you really want to know about them. Which is why earlier this week I did a survey.
Here are some of my pre-launch reader survey results results.
In my pre-launch reader survey 95% of respondents were female.
Gender
61% made up the 25-44 age group, which is a bit less than what Google Analytics showed.
Age
The really awesome thing with about doing your own survey is you can ask more specific questions than you may be able to gather in other ways.
How cool is it to know that 67% of people are already business owners or are starting the process, with another 15% who are interested.
Do you own your own business?
Of those business owners, I found that for 31% their business was their primary source of income, with the remaining 69% wanted it to be.
If you are a business owner or you are starting this journey, does your business create your primary source of income?
I also asked very specific questions like:
What type of posts do you most enjoy reading?
How often do you find yourself reading Think Creative?
If you own a business, what do you find to be your biggest struggles?
Why do you visit Think Creative?
What could I do differently or improve upon?
These answers not only gave me greater insight into my readers, but will allow me to create tailor made content in the future to their specific concerns and needs.
Define Your Ideal Client
Generally the research you have acquired will tell you one of two things. Yay!! I am appealing to exactly who I want to serve. Or NOOOOO, this is not at all what I want.
Even though it is tempting to just be done, you need to take this a step further. Who is your IDEAL client or customer? Ideal doesn’t necessarily mean who you currently are working with. I have found so many of my clients automatically assume their ideal client is their best customer or the people who have been easiest to work with. Although this can be the case, you might be missing a huge opportunity.
Use the following questions to begin defining your IDEAL client!
What do they look like? – Age? Sex? Style?
What stage of life are they in?
What are their key traits or characteristics?
What are they not?
What motivates them?
How do they act or respond?
How do they treat you?
What is it like to work with them?
What is their biggest problem or goal?
Once you know who this person is and what they look like, the next step is knowing what to do with it. How would you answer:
Who do YOU want to help?
Why do you want to help them?
What problem do you solve?
What results can you deliver?
How do you deliver the results?
If the products and services you are offering don’t align with your ideal clients needs or problems, you may have a hard time selling to them. Take some time and digest. Start doing that initial research. Begin asking yourself some hard questions. And get busy!
How have you defined your ideal client? Are you meeting their needs?
