Understanding your ideal customer, or avatar as some call it, might seem like an obvious thing to do when you want to sell to them. However, many business owners worry that by identifying certain people who suit their product or service, they will lose out on selling to everyone else. But, whether it feels right or not, being specific is likely to lead to more business, not less. Here are 5 reasons why having a clear understanding of your ideal customer will make marketing – and selling – easier.
1. What’s the problem?
Our brains are, unfortunately, wired to notice the negatives, the challenges, the pain points of life. If we spot something on social media, for example, that is really emotive, we are far more likely to read more or comment than if we have experienced really excellent customer service or a random act of kindness. If, as a business owner, you are able to truly understand a problem being experienced by your ideal customer and put it in writing, along with your perfect solution, you are very likely to attract people who want to buy that solution. It is about putting yourself in their shoes.However, we can only understand what is truly keeping our ideal client awake at night if we spend time working out what they are thinking and feeling and why we have the ideal solution for them.
2. Cut through the noise
We live in an information-rich world. Our news feeds barely contain any actual news; they are full of opinions and commentary on life. When we are marketing our business, we need to find a way to cut through that noise of all the emails, all the posts and all the feeds – to get to the right people. If we can reach out to our ideal clients by telling them something clearly, precisely and exactly at the time they need to hear it, we will achieve this. Our words will be loudest because they speak directly to the people or ideal customer who needs our solution; our goods or services. We can only be this precise if we truly understand what makes our ideal client tick.
3. Right place, right time
Similar to the problem of noise, there is also a lot of choice these days when it comes to ways to reach our audience. There are many, many different social media channels, people don’t necessarily read newspapers to get information these days, they head to a website or blog site that serves the information they want. As a business owner, it’s your job to make sure your product or service is on that website, blog site or chosen marketing channel. You need to be promoting your offering in the place where your ideal client hangs out. You need to make finding you and hearing you as easy for your customer as possible.Part of understanding our ideal client is thinking about all aspects of their life, including hobbies, relaxation pursuits and family time. By doing this we can understand where they might go for news and information.
4. Look after your spend
By being focused and specific, we are cutting back on unnecessary marketing activity, just as much as understanding what we do need to be doing to promote our business. Without a clear idea of what you need to say and who you need to say it to, you will waste money on adverts, design or even just your own creative time, putting out content that doesn’t hit home. Make sure you only ever create content that is relevant, clear and targeted and your return on investment is bound to increase exponentially. Your content needs to resonate.
5. Business Development
If you have managed to tap into the subconscious of your ideal client, congratulations. Now it’s time to really use the data you have collected to think about future growth of your business. If you have worked on understanding your ideal client, you might have a feel for other areas of life or business you can help them with. Having clarity about your message and your audience means you can quickly and easily understand what new products or services would be worth launching. You know what’s keeping your audience awake at night, so how can you/your business help? Hopefully, you can now see that investing time in researching and brainstorming your ideal client can pay dividends. It is important to say here that it is ok to have more than one ideal client for differing products or services and it is ok for this ideal client to change over time too. Save time and money when you create your marketing plan by making sure it’s only targeting the right people. Being specific can increase the credibility and believability of your messages as you are not claiming to be “all things to all people”.
Give it a try and let me know if you see a difference
