Identifying your ideal customer is a phrase that is often talked about in the business circles and for very good reasons such as the ones I outline below.
Quite often new business owners believe that anyone can benefit from what they are selling and are reluctant to narrow down their target audience in this way.
Identifying your ideal customer doesn’t mean that you can’t sell to people who don’t fit squarely within the profile you’ve defined…
…It simply means focusing your business message and marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to buy and benefit from your particular product/service.
- Who exactly will benefit from hearing about your business?
- Who needs your services?
These are the two most basic questions you need to answer when building a business. Quite simply because you don’t want to depend on “hope” marketing, where you just throw out a message and hope that someone sees it.
Instead, create your ideal customer profile first. And as a result, you’ll know exactly who needs your product/services, who you can help get the best results and who is willing to pay for them.
Here’s 3 great reasons to identify your ideal customer profile…
1 – Improve Your Marketing Message
Your marketing message should be tailored to the needs of your ideal customer.
Your business isn’t about you and what you want to sell; it’s about how you can provide what your market needs – aka your ideal customer. How can you help to resolve their problems? What are they struggling with and how will YOUR product or service help them?
By identifying your ideal customer profile and tailoring your marketing message to them, you will not only improve your marketing message itself, you will also improve results of that marketing.
2 – Increase Your Return On Investments
You’ll see better ROI on advertising with targeted ads.
Advertising is an expected part of running a business but similar to the above reason with with targeting your marketing message, the same targeting is also necessary with advertising. Spending money advertising to the wrong people – the people who don’t need or want your product/service – is a waste of your valuable resources.
For example: My neighbor has perfect hearing but keeps getting mailings for hearing aids. He doesn’t need this product so the brochure is immediately throw in the bin. Consider the costs of printing, postage, paying someone to stuff the envelopes, plus the cost of whatever marketing list his name ended up on, and that company is throwing out real money by not reaching the right kind of people. Now double that cost because his teenage daughter receives the SAME mailing even though she also has perfect hearing!
Reaching the wrong people is a waste of time, effort and money
3 – Copywriting Becomes Easier
Writing becomes easier when you’re addressing just one particular type of person.
Think of your ideal customer as that one person who can benefit the most from your services. You can even give that person a name and create a unique character; now think about that one person when you write emails, blog posts, ads, or social media posts. If you think of them as an individual person, you won’t get overwhelmed at writing for a large group of different people who quite often have a vairiety of needs and wants. Your copy will be much more personal and conversational if you focus on writing to just one type of person.
Even if you hire a copywriter to help you, they will ask you for this same ideal customer profile and information. They need to know who the message is meant for so they can use the proper words to achieve the right mood.
Of course, there are many other reasons why identifying your ideal customer is an important exercise when you are building a business. If you’re not quite sure who they are, start by figuring who they’re not and go from there.
Need help to identify your ideal customer? Check out my latest Business Success Plan…
Identifying your ideal customer profile is an important first step when planning your business and my newest planner has a section that will help you to laser focus on who he/she is and how you can attract them.
My “Start-Up Success Plan” is filled with exercises for you to map out your business, from what products and services to offer to how to throw a launch party both on and offline, plus everything in between. Click here to find out more
