How to create your ideal client profile
This blog is part of the Brand Foundation Series. Where the first five posts talked about your vision and mission, how you can define your why, your values & beliefs, how you can make your business stand out, and how you determine your ideal client. For the last two weeks, we talked about how you can use market research to get to know your ideal clients, and how to research your competitors. Now it is time to draft that ideal client profile.
You will learn:
Why do you need an ideal client profile
How can you create an ideal client profile
Have you ever created an ideal client profile where you needed to write down all the demographics of your ideal client? Only to be left with no idea how to actually use this to target your audience?
Same here. I tried to do it, felt it was totally useless and then just skipped this step. But I realise now how important this step actually is. That the better you have an understanding of your target market, the better you can serve your market. It is just the way we are taught to do it, that leaves you with more questions than answers. And certainly does not provide any insights in how to talk to your audience.
Therefore, in this article, I will use a different way to create an ideal client profile using elements from the previous posts in the Brand Foundation Series. But first, let us talk about why you need an ideal client profile.
Why do you need an ideal client profile?
The concept of having a client profile is to know who your ideal client is because if you really want to connect with them, you need to know who they are. But as you can never talk to everyone, even within your niche, you want to create a profile of this one person in your audience who you are talking with.
So you want to know what defines this person that would be interested in your service. And once you have worked this out, you can use this information to gear your communication, marketing etc. towards reaching this person.
The better that you know who this person is, what they value and what they struggle with, the better you can define the way you need to communicate, which words to use and not use, which topics to discuss so that your message will resonate with this person. And ultimately, the more likely it will be that they will buy from you or work with you.
How can you create an ideal client profile?
This is where I feel a lot of ideal client profiles, ideal customer profile, client avatar or whatever you want to call them are not in-depth enough to be beneficial. Look, I do not have anything against listing demographics, but I feel you need to know more about your ideal client than someone's age, gender, marital status, income and education.
If you have done the exercises in the blog about how to define who you want to work with, which is part of the Brand Foundation Series, you can start by listing the characteristics of the people you want to work with first. If not, I would definitely suggest reading this blog first, do the market research after you know who you want to work with and then come back to this blog. As here, we will be combining these two elements.
In short, in the blog about how to define who you want to work with, I mentioned that before creating a client profile and go more into detail you do not only need to know the type of client that fits perfectly with the type of services you offer or the price point you have for your service. But that you also need to decide what kind of person you want to work with that will fit well with who you are and your way of working.
Ideal client profile: Demographics
When you looked at who you wanted to work with and you really only want to work with other females then use gender as one of the elements in your profile. If you want to work with other moms to show how they can build a business while taking care of their kids, then absolutely list this in your profile. But if you want to work with copywriters and help them market their business on social media, these two elements might not be relevant so have a look at below list and decide which ones are and are not relevant for you.
Gender
Nationality
Age
Race
Marital Status
Number of children (if any)
Annual Income
Education level
Employment status
Living status (renting or owner of a house)
Religious affiliation (you see more businesses focusing on faith-based entrepreneurs)
Ideal client profile: Psychographics
Once you have looked at the demographics, we can start with psychographics. These elements are related to human behaviour, like our personalities and characteristics. Here you want to look into your audiences values, priorities and motivations:
Lifestyle
Hobbies
Where do they shop?
Which books do they read?
What do they do in their free time?
Where do they go on holiday?
But unlike demographics, this is not data that you can pull from somewhere this is subjective. And, again, some might not be relevant to your business.
To gear this more towards your audience in business, you can think of the following elements that you need to know:
What are the goals of your audience?
Where do they want to be in 3 years?
What kind of lifestyle do they want to lead?
What is holding them back? Think about internal (maybe I do not have what it takes) and external issues (I do not have enough time or money).
That is why in an earlier stage of the brand foundation steps, we spent time on market research. And asked our audience questions like what their goals are for the coming few years, what they were struggling with that is preventing them from reaching their goals, what solutions they have tried before, what would their ideal solution look like and what is holding them back from taking action. Because the only way to get these answers is to ask your audience.
Up next
Next up in this Brand Foundation series is about deciding which services to offer now you know who you want to work with, what your ideal client is struggling with and which gaps there are in the market.
How do you feel about your knowledge about your ideal client? Do you feel like you really know what struggles they have?
Are you not sure about your answers, and do you feel you are overwhelmed and need focus and direction? Then let's chat.
I help you to go from overwhelm to clarity and take action in my 3-month mentor program. The program includes weekly calls and email support in between the calls. There is also some 'homework' involved so that you can directly practice what you have learned and feel empowered.
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