When it comes to your ideal client, does it ever feel like an elusive or completely abstract idea? You probably know that it’s important to define your “target audience”, or as I often like to say “spirit animals”, but the question is how do you actually do it in practice?
The more that you get to know your ideal clients, the more impactful and valuable your branding and marketing will be, and the easier it will be to show up as your authentic self. This is because you’ll be attracting the right people to your brand who align with your values and offerings.
So today I’m sharing three steps to help you identify your ideal clients so you can stay true to yourself and target the customers that align the best with what you have to offer.
Step 1: How can you help?
As mission-driven entrepreneurs, we are all about serving and helping our ideal audiences. Just like you would help a friend who is in need, your business can help countless others by solving specific problems.
To get clear on how you can help your audience (and ultimately who this audience is), here are a few questions that you can ask yourself.
- What problem is your business trying to solve?
- How will your customer’s life change after working with you?
- What pain points does your product or service alleviate?
- Who experiences the problems that you are able to solve?
- What keeps them up at night? What are there anxieties or fears)
- What attracts or repels them?
Step 2: What are your strengths?
This step is all about getting clear on what makes you unique and different from the other offerings out there. Think about your natural talents and gifts that you can utilize when helping your ideal clients.
For example, as a natural empath with a bubbly personality, it’s easy for me to connect with others and form relationships. This is useful in my business because it helps new clients feel that they are seen and know that I truly have their best interests at heart. This has led to my marketing agency being almost entirely referral based. I truly love and value each and every one of my clients, and this strength has led to the growth I’ve seen today!
Now, this doesn’t mean that my approach is for everyone. Spend some time writing down what your strengths are, and then brainstorm who would benefit the most from these strengths. In other words, if your target audience doesn’t view your strength as a benefit, then it won’t be useful in attracting them to your business.
Step 3: Dig into the data
We can spend lots of time thinking about who our ideal clients are, but nothing beats getting information directly from the source!
If you are already an established business, you can utilize data from sources like google analytics or social media platform analytics to get to know more about your ideal clients. This is where you can get more specific on demographic data like age, location, and interests in order to confirm (or refute) what your intuition already told you about who your ideal client is.
You can also conduct surveys of current customers to find out more about how they found your business and what they value the most about what you have to offer.
If you are just starting out you likely won’t have a lot of current data to go off of, but you can still get out in the market and start talking to people who you think could be your ideal clients. These could be simply friends or family members who fit the mold of your ideal client, and this step can be very useful in helping to understand if your assumptions about their needs and paint points were correct.
Put it all together
It’s time to put everything you’ve learned into a clear picture of who your ideal client is. I think it is so important to move beyond the terms “ideal client” or “target client”, so I love to get more personal by creating a client persona. This will help remind you that the people you are marketing to are all individuals with real needs and pain points.
Give your persona a name and a picture so you can clearly visualize in your mind WHO this person is. Write down all the details of their pain points and needs, and the problems that you can uniquely help them solve. Remember to add in any demographic data that you have to support your findings.
There you have it! 3 easy steps to finding your ideal clients. Make sure to return to this exercise anytime your business offerings shift or pivot so that you always have a clear picture of who you are serving and why.
