Should I actually bother with an Ideal Customer Profile?

One of the hardest jobs of a business owner is finding the people you are here to help. We all have a product or a service but what will ultimately decide our success or our failure is the ability to find the right customers. The secret to attracting those clients is an Ideal Customer Profile.

What is an Ideal Customer Profile?

Ideal customer, target market, client avatar, or buyer persona all mean the same thing. They are characteristics of a fictitious client that represent your ideal prospect. This is the person your product or service is best suited for and is designed to solve their problems.

Why do I need an Ideal Customer Profile?

Creating an Ideal Customer profile helps you target your message. 

Have you ever been to a website that sounded super corporate and you just couldn’t relate? Maybe the copy wasn’t very conversational and it came across bland or boring.

Now, think of the billions of people on the planet – do you really want to try talking to all of them? First off how exhausting would it be to try to please them all with your product or service – impossible right?

When you land on sites that try to talk to everyone, chances are you don’t really stick around because they aren’t resonating with you. Therefore, when you build your marketing around an ideal customer profile, you will resonate with the people you are actually trying to reach. It’s critical to the success of your website, will help your business thrive and you owe it to those that need what you can provide.

Related Post: Is my Web Design really that Important?

Don’t believe me?

I reached out to someone I admire in the online space to get another perspective. Jana at Twigy Posts creates the most beautiful stock photography and her Instagram feed captured my attention immediately.

I love her story so sharing it here:

But if I target just one person, won’t I be missing out on a larger market?

This is a common misconception. Think about how many customers you actually need to buy your products or services this year to make your desired income? What about over the next 5 years? How about 10? If you’re a service-based business, chances are this number isn’t very high. For product-based businesses, it may be a little higher but nowhere near the population of the world right? Or even the population of your city? What about your neighbourhood? 

I know I’m exaggerating here but the point I’m trying to make is that to run a successful business we don’t need to speak to everyone. Plus if you try to speak to everyone, you aren’t going to relate to anyone. In fact, there’s a theory written by Kevin Kelly that you can make a good living with 1,000 true fans. Now doesn’t that seem way more achievable? 

Say you didn’t narrow down your marketing focus and you were able to get some customers. Do you think they’d be right for your offerings? Not necessarily. And what happens when the wrong person buys what we are offering? Well, they’re not a good fit, they may have negative reviews, and they may be more difficult to work with because you aren’t really for them. So stop marketing to everyone.

Think about who you would love to work with day in & day out. Wouldn’t you rather wake up each day to look at your calendar and be excited about the clients you get to work with? Or as Jana said, wouldn’t you love to be someone’s hero and help them through their own business journey? I sure would and hope I do!!

So, how do you capture the attention of these dream clients? You have to speak to them and relate to them. You have to understand their struggles and be able to communicate what they need better than they can. 

Curate content for everything they are looking for.

Whenever you are doing any sort of marketing for your business, pretend you are speaking to that one ideal client.

• What are they struggling with? Think about the pain points they have and where they are in their journey.
• How can you help them? Think about problems your products or services solve and how you can provide them with a transformation.
• How are you speaking to them? You would address your Grandma very differently from your Accountant or your 3-year-old son. 
• How do they consume content? Do they prefer blog posts, podcasts, video or photographs?

The deeper understanding you have of your ideal customer profile, the better you’ll be able to connect with them and the more effective your messaging will be. When we relate to our clients, we can serve them better which is why I believe any marketing plan, web design included, should start with an understanding of your ideal client.