Not everyone shops at WalMart. Not everyone will buy a Mini Cooper, despite the fact it is the coolest car around. Not everybody dines at the Windsor Arms Hotel. Nor does everyone eat at MacDonalds. And not everybody wants to buy your product or service. Ouch, that hurts!
But wait! Read on. There are still plenty of people who will buy from you. There are plenty of people who value what you do enough to pay for it. They want to buy from you; they love buying from you. These smart people are called your Ideal Clients.
So wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to have a clear and accurate picture of your Ideal Client? Then you can focus all your marketing and sales efforts on those people. Then you do not waste time and dollars trying to sell your product to people who will never buy it anyway?
So start by painting a detailed, and I mean detailed, picture of your Ideal Client. Look closely at those who have bought from you; they are a good indicator of who will buy from you in the future. Past performance is a great indicator of future performance. This is not an easy exercise and it takes a long time. To get you started here are some questions to ask about your Ideal Client:
- Where do they live?
- Where do they work?
- What other outside services do they use?
- Are they male, female or neither?
- How old are they?
- What is their income?
- How did they come to be your clients?
- Are they married? With children?
- Gay? Straight?
- Professional? Blue Collar? Executive?
- What do they do in their spare time?
- What are they passionate about?
- What organizations do they belong to?
- How do they learn? Where do they go to learn?
- What do they eat? Where do they eat?
- Are they healthy?
- What do they read? Where do they read?
- How do they buy? Web? Shop?
- How do they pay?
- What do they value?
- What are they buying from you?
- Why are they buying from you?
Keep asking the questions. Call on a personal friend or business colleague to work with you. Explain to them how important this exercise is to the future of your business. And when you have arrived at the definitive picture of your Ideal Client you can focus all your marketing attention on them; the people who truly want to buy from you.
Not everyone can be your customer. In fact not everyone SHOULD be your customer. So identify your Ideal Client and focus on her.
Thanks so much for this – what a great reminder. I am going to stop and go through this exercise TODAY. No more random marketing hoping to get through to my ideal client. Focused, deliberate marketing to who I want, where they are.
Thanks again.
Thank you for the feedback. I suspect the time you take to do the exercise will give you great return on investment as you focus focus focus on your ideal clients.