• Within this audience exists your ideal customer: a particular person who-according to your research-has an interest in your brand and products. One of the main reasons that businesses fail to identify a specific ideal customer is because they fear that by marketing to too specific an audience, they will run the risk of losing other potential.
• Your existing customers may not necessarily be your ideal ones. In a perfect world, your ideal customer will marry both of these aspects. They’re someone who sees tons of value in your product or service, but will also help push your business in the direction you want to go.

You need to deliberate over the behavioural aspects of your customers. 2) Dive deep into the customer journey map. A customer journey map is a type of document that gives a deep insight into the customer needs, goals, challenges and other patterns. It will help you to know the type of products your customers are interacting with. Whether on your marketing site, your ad campaigns, inside your app, through your email follow-up, or even your sales conversations, if you don’t know who you’re talking to you’re in trouble. When you don’t know who your ideal customer is – or aren’t willing to focus on just them to, you know, avoid missing all those other.

May 27, 2015

While it’s true that defining your ideal customer can feel like you are excluding other audiences who might buy from you, focusing on the right people brings clarity to your marketing efforts which ultimately leads to a more profitable business.

New York Times best-selling author Ramit Sethi said it best: “Algorithms change. Tactics change. But the fundamentals of learning what people want, seeing exactly where you can help them, and then telling the right people about it (emphasis mine) are classic strategies that worked 1,000 years ago and will work 1,000 years from now.”

This post is about getting to know the right people who will benefit from and pay for your products and services. What follows is 10 essential questions to ask in the process of defining your ideal customer. Let’s get started.

1. Where do your ideal customers hang out?

Name the digital and physical spaces where your ideal customer hangs out. The more specific, the better.

“Hangs out on Facebook” is too general.

“Hangs out in the Wine Lovers of Atlanta Facebook group” is more precise and actionable.

“Likes the outdoors” is too general to mean anything insightful.

“Likes going to the park every Saturday morning with their kids” shows habits and values.

“Reads blogs” isn’t targeted enough.

“Obsessively reads Lifehacker, Techcrunch, and Reddit” is revealing. Knowing where your ideal customers hang out influences:

• Where you advertise (certain Facebook groups, niche forums, physical locations)
• Places to listen and learn about customers
• The best blogs for writing guest posts

2. Where do your customers get their information?

In an ideal world with unlimited resources, your company would have helpful and relevant content on every single channel. But since you’re not Coca-Cola, you have to be strategic about targeting where your ideal customers go to get information.

When your customer is in research mode, where do they go? Google? Certain blogs? Books? Magazines? Twitter?

Write your findings as a simple sentence: “When Maggie is curious about a topic, the first place she goes is Google search on her iPhone.”

3. What are your customers challenges and frustrations?

Empathy is the biggest benefit to defining your ideal customer’s challenges and frustrations. By knowing what it’s like walking in your customer’s shoes, you’ll be able to create great products and services that address their specific pain points and problems.

Here are a few examples to jog your creativity:

• “I wish someone would just edit this video for me.”

• “I need to lose ten pounds before spring break.”

• “Ugh. I wish I could schedule my tweets.”

Your ideal customer’s challenges and frustrations impact a number of things:

• Services you offer: The service you are offering has to cure a large enough pain point that your ideal customer will pay you to do it for them instead of doing it themselves.
• Products you make: Similar to the service you offer, the products you make must solve your ideal customer’s challenges or frustrations to be worth buying.
• Emotions you speak to: There are a number of emotions behind the challenges and frustrations your ideal customer is experiencing - sadness, anger, fear, hope, a desire for something better. By speaking to what your customer is feeling, you’ll be able to connect with them emotionally on more than just a rational level.
• Customer stories you tell: The logic here is simple. When your ideal customers see an existing customer who solved their challenges and frustrations with your product/service, then they are more likely to buy your product/service.

4. What are your customers goals and priorities right now?

Knowing your ideal customer’s goals and priorities help you paint a picture of what life could be like after using your products and services. Think of it as selling the dream.

When your products or services help your ideal customer reach their goals, also known as product/market fit, it becomes much easier to write copy for your blog, website, and other touchpoints in the customer journey.

Here are a few examples of copy written to speak to customer goals:

5. What brands do your customers like?̋

Make a list of the brands your ideal customer likes, both in general and within your space. At a higher level, it’s like the Mac versus PC commercials. Both brands have their own look and feel and draw different types of people. Is your ideal customer more Nordstrom or Ross? Target or Walmart?

For brands within your space, knowing what companies your ideal customer likes could spark ideas for future partnerships to pursue. Or give you inspiration on how to better connect with your audience.

6. What is your customers preferred form of communication?

Do they tweet? Text? Chat? Email? Or prefer physical mail? This is a matter of where your audience wants you to communicate with them. For example, a number of brands use Snapchat to communicate with teenagers. Why? Because teenagers aren’t spending their screen time checking Facebook. The core principle is to communicate with your customers where they already are.

7. What phrases and exact language do your customers use?

Robert Collier has this genius quote: “Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind.”

There is already language in your customer’s mind for their problems, needs, and desires. Your job is to listen and write it down.

When you are researching the places where your ideal customer hangs out, document the exact phrases they say and store them in a spreadsheet to spark ideas for website copy, blog posts, and landing pages. Or send a survey using SurveyMonkey to ask open ended-questions and document your audience’s word-for-word responses.

People are naturally attracted to other people who speak their language, get their sense of humor or have the same point of view. It provides a feeling of belonging and connection that can create loyalty towards your brand. Your goal is for customers to say to themselves “Whoa it’s like they’re talking to me” every time they read your writing.

8. What is your preferred customer’s budget?

Pricing is tricky. Price too low and people will undervalue you, but price too high and no one will buy. For example, if a house in San Francisco cost $100, everyone would know it’s a scam. Whereas if a cup of tea cost $100, it’d be ludicrous.

The sweet spot is to charge the maximum amount your ideal customer is ready, willing and able to pay.

9. What does a day in your ideal customer’s life look like?

7:55am - George wakes up to the sound of smooooth jazz

8:15am - Brews the new Costa Rican roast using his shiny new Keurig

8:43am - Stuck in traffic on the 101 listening to smooooooth jazz again

9:15am - Gets into the office

9:18am - Checks email, like everyone else

10:01am - Starts prepping his company email newsletter

12:05pm - Eats the Italian combo at Subway

1:08pm - Afternoon lull, wishing his office had a nap pod

2:35pm - Sends newsletter

2:38pm - Brainstorms how to generate more leads to meet quarterly growth goals

4:00pm - Interviews a customer for market research

6:15pm - Drives home ready for a Breaking Bad marathon on Netflix

Imagining what your ideal customer’s daily life looks like adds a personal, human element to your marketing. It also gets practical - when is the best time to email them? When are they most likely to respond to your communications? When are they most attentive?

10. What makes your perfect customers happy?

The customer journey is more than robotic transactions and the exchange of money for goods and services. As emotional beings, people want to interact with brands that makes them feel good about themselves.

Where are the places in your ideal customer’s journey you can insert surprises, do the unexpected, and bring a smile to their face? Maybe it’s a handwritten thank you note after signing up for your service, a personalized email sent on their birthday, or free shipping for all deliveries (who doesn’t love free shipping?).

Inserting happiness into specific customer touchpoints can create a deeper level of emotional connection that grows loyal and raving fans for the long-term. Or as Marty Neumeier would say, improves that “gut feeling” people get when they hear about your product, service, or company.

The end result

After answering all of these questions, write a paragraph summarizing your findings. It could look like this summary of Maggie, the ideal customer for a web design blog focused on female designers:

“Maggie loves spending time learning about wine in her Pinot Noir Lovers Facebook group. It’s a passion of hers. Her biggest frustration in her role as a designer is figuring out how to use Photoshop. When she’s in research mode, the first place she goes to is Google search on her iMac at work. Her long-term dream is to start her own design practice so she can make her own schedule and work with clients she wants to work with, especially non-profits. Last week when she was shopping at Anthropologie browsing her favorite blog on her iPhone, SF Girl By The Bay, an ad popped up with an invitation to check out a course for web design.”

The end result is a better understanding of where and how to reach ideal customers who will gain massive value from what you’re offering and pay for your products and services, happily.

So you’ve defined your ideal customer? Here’s how to personalize their experience with data.

If I asked you to describe your ideal customer, could you?

If you’re a small business owner and can’t answer this question, you have some work to do.

Why?

Because, if you want to grow your business through marketing, you need to know who you are targeting. And creating a detailed persona of your ideal customer is a step you can’t skip.

Once you’re clear on who you want to work with, it’s waaaaay easier to do the following…

• Clarify your brand message (read: have a clear elevator pitch).
• Optimize your products and/or services.
• Develop a focused marketing system that attracts the right people (your ideal customer).
• Grow your business.

Don’t get caught in the energy-sucking grind of trying to be all things to all people. This grueling routine pulls you from what you should be doing—serving a specific group of people who qualify as perfect customers.

Step #1: To find your ideal customer you must be focused and a bit tenacious in weeding out the bad customers.

Visualize a scenario where you’re taking on less-than-ideal customers. They will…

• Distract you from your mission.
• Stifle your growth.
• Veer you off course by asking for help with things you don’t specialize in.
• Cramp your style, drag you down, and frustrate you to no end.
• Help you waste time, money, and precious brainpower on things you shouldn’t be doing, all for a person you shouldn’t be working with.

Yikes. I know, right?

Ideal customers are gold

Now that you know how “bad customers” can drag you down, think about a narrowly defined chunk of the market—a select group of “good people” that fit a set group of characteristics. Most small businesses are built to serve a small, narrowly defined section of the population.

And before I go any further, let me put your fears to rest. Just because you are narrowing down doesn’t mean you can’t work with people that are just outside of your ideal client range. Not everyone is a perfect fit and nothing is set in stone, so don’t worry about losing business by niching down.

In fact, targeting a select group of ideal peeps and positioning your business by focusing on them, will make it easier to market your business and grow.

The process is simple – you identify your ideal customer, spell out the details, and use that clear-cut description to build your marketing foundation.

Develop and amplify all your marketing efforts around this person, with the goal of attracting more that fit the mold. An ideal customer is a perfect, or at least, almost perfect fit. Meaning…

• Your ideal customer has a pain only someone with your skill-set can fix.
• Maybe this person simply likes the way you approach problem-solving.
• Or their values jibe with yours.
• Some customers will simply love to work with you. They value your service and let you know it.

But lousy customers will stifle your growth

There are many variables to consider, but here’s the thing—a lousy client might do a variety of things to strangle the life right out of you. They might…

• Not pay you on time.
• Take you away from the fine people you really want to work with.
• Fight you on everything, from deadlines to pricing.
• And they will surely suck the lifeblood out of you.

Bad clients can be energy vampires of the worst kind. And they’ll become a huge drag on your business and your life.

You do not want that!

Another possibility is that there is someone you want to work with but they simply aren’t a good fit. This is when it’s good to have an active referral network so you can send them to someone you trust. But that’s a topic for another day.

Step #2: Focus on the person you’ve earned the right to work with.

So, what is the best way to find your ideal customer? (Switch it up!)

If you’ve spent any time trying to figure out who your ideal customer is, you’re probably familiar with terms like demographics and psychographics.

Demographics include characteristics like income, age, and education. Who is this person?

Psychographics dial into your ideal customer’s behaviors. What are their values, interests, opinions? Why would this person buy from you?

So, you can easily see how finding your ideal customer is part art and part science.

I could go on all day about the “science” part but my goal today is not to bore you to death. My goal is to show you an easier way to find that ideal person.

And to be perfectly honest, I would advise you to not get caught up in the science part (demographics and psychographics) and instead focus on finding out more about a potential customer’s buying process. But I’ll detail that a bit later.

Instead of trying to woo a certain type of customer, it might be better to pivot and think about the person you’ve earned the right to work with.

You’re experienced and bring something unique to the table…

• Think about past customers, like the energy vampires above, who didn’t appreciate what they were getting. (You know who I’m talking about.)
• Now, think about the type of person who values your work and would gladly tell the world about it.

I think you’ve earned the right to work with someone who recognizes the full worth of what they are getting – your business, your service, and you.

Think about ideal Susan or just-right Phil. What are they like?

Do they have distinctive characteristics that translate to your success?

Write out a list of current customers or people you’ve worked with in the past. The good ones. Now, clearly define the traits that you value and bring success.

So, step #2 is basically defining the really, really great customers 🙂

Step #3: Create an imperfect customer list.

Now write out a “don’t want to, never, ever work with again” list.

What are the common characteristics of these people? The rotten eggs. Clearly define the traits that you do not value and bring on a bad case of business constipation.

Get clarity around the good eggs and the bad eggs.

Once you have a clear vision of the people who truly value what you do, those you need to work with—made easier by visualizing those who drag you down—you’re well on your way. (I see you smiling :))

So, think hard about people you DO NOT want to work with because completing personas of those you don’t want to work with will make it much, much easier for you to clearly define those you DO want to work with.

Gaining this “good/bad” clarity is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. Because until you’re 100% clear on the type of person you really want to work with, it’s almost impossible to turn down work from clients who will take you away from the work you really want to and should be doing.

Step #4: Drill-down and find your ideal customer.

Create a sketch of the person you don’t want to work with.

Then, create an ideal buyer persona.

You can detail background and demographics. Things like age, gender, education, job title, experience, income, relationship status, etc., but ponder this for a moment…

If you want to create a valuable persona, shouldn’t you focus on how and why they go through a buying process?

To dig deep and get into the things that really matter…

• What motivates them to buy from you?
• What are their buying concerns?
• What are their challenges? Worries? Pain?
• Are they focused on price, speedy turnaround? Or do they know quality work takes time?
• What do they read? Where do they hang out online? Get their info? And how does this influence their buying decision?
• Why do they want to work with us? What will they gain?

The questions above are just to get you started, but they are the best way to clarify who that ideal customer is.

When they visit your website you want to…

1. Have a brand that makes it crystal clear what you do.
2. Quickly communicates how you will fix their pain.
3. And makes it obvious what they should do to start working with you.

Creating an ideal buyer persona makes creating this 1-2-3 messaging punch much, much easier.

Step #5: Understand the difference between buyer profiles and buyer personas.

When creating customer “profiles,” most businesses simply pick a name like “Value-obsessed Jane” or “Tech-smart Brian,” find a stock photo, list a few characteristics they think will matter, and call it a day.

This kind of futile exercise will NOT help your marketing because it’s incomplete guesswork.

You need to build a true representation of your ideal customer. And to get the insights that will move the needle in your business, you need to dig deep to reveal their approach to buying.

A detailed “persona” of your ideal customer symbolizes a real person you should focus on. Most businesses create what they think are personas but they are actually buyer profiles – profiling someone like “Tech smart Brian” without diving deeper, to learn about Brian’s journey to making a buying decision.

You want to go beyond a simple buyer “profile.” Demographic and psychographic insights are certainly not useless. I’ve just found that it’s way more valuable to…

• First define the type of customers (businesses) you should be working with, using the methods above. (Your ideal buyer profile)
• Then dive deeper by interviewing people, getting the insights you need, then developing an ideal buyer persona.

And, if you interview these people the right way, they’ll give you so much valuable intel – WAAAAY more than if you simply profiled them as someone like “Tech smart Brian is the Director of Global Cloud Solutions at IT company B with revenues of 10M.”

“Profiling” someone like this is certainly helpful but you need to dig deeper.

As Adele Revella writes here, “a buyer persona tells you what prospective customers are thinking and doing as they weigh their options to address a problem that your company resolves.”

And the best method to gather this crucial intel is by interviewing those individuals who might buy your stuff! THIS is how you gain the awareness you need to develop the type of messaging you need to improve your marketing.

Step #6: Interview people and start crafting your buyer personas.

If someone has recently bought from you, the buying process is still in their cranium, so ask them for an interview. Learn the how and why of their journey.

Start by asking a question like the following…

• “Think about your first step in the process. There was a problem you had to solve and finally decided you had to act. What was your first step?”

This is simply an opening you build on. Have a friendly conversation but start layering your questions to learn about their journey.

You want to dive deep into the buyer’s journey so you know the kind of questions your ideal customer will ask and then craft content that gives them the info they seek.

• List the people who’ve just started working with you, and ask them if they would be available for a short call.
• If someone has decided not to work with you, ask them for an interview too. They might blow you off, but if you can book a call, think about how valuable that might be. A call like this will answer one of the most important questions you could ever ask – Why did you decide to not work with us?

Just work to unearth everything you can about their buying journey.

Dig, dig, dig…

What triggered you to start looking for a solution?

What was your next step?

What were the barriers that stopped you?

Etc.

Book a call, interview them on Skype or Zoom, transcribe the call, then look it over to pull out the golden nuggets you need to build you ideal client persona.

I use ECamm Call Recorder for Skype, send the audio to rev.com and in roughly 12 hours I have a transcript to work with.

Step #7: The final step

Go over your transcripts, find the most important information and start building your profile.

Try and interview at least five people, preferably more. 5-10 is usually enough to get the details you need.

The Buyer Persona Institute offers a great profile template. But don’t agonize over getting this perfect, just go! It’s not necessary to get this detailed when you first start. It is, however, a great framework detailing the kind of questions you need to be asking.

Once you gather the type of information your ideal customer is searching for, your marketing and the way you conduct business will change.

You will find it so much easier to create the kind of content these people (your ideal customers) are looking for.

Or in the words of Marcus Sheridan, “They ask, you answer” will drive all your content marketing 🙂

And, don’t forget to weed out the bad eggs. Detailing the type of clients that drain you will make it easy for you to avoid working with them in the future.

When you’re armed with a clear picture of your ideal customer, it will be SO MUCH EASIER to answer the following…

How To Find Your Ideal Customer

• Is my pricing right?
• Should our products and/or services change?
• What content do I need to produce? Whitepapers? Detailed blog posts? Explainer videos?
• Is my client onboarding process in need of an overhaul?
• How important is social media and what channels should I be on?
• How, exactly, will I get this information in the hands of the right people?

And know that this is an ever-evolving process of discovery. Your business evolves, your marketing strategies change, and your ideal client might change over time as well.

But the more you discover, act, and evolve, you’ll see how incredibly important this is.

How To Find Your Ideal Customer Profile

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