If you want to make your marketing easier and more effective, it is essential to understand who your ideal clients are and what makes them tick (and then to use that information!).
Check out this blog for help with how to do that.
Why marketing can be hard
When someone joins my online community The Courageous Business Women’s Collective, I ask them what they struggle with around effectively marketing their business. I’ve categorised these answers into things like confidence putting themselves out there, time management and focus, lack of knowledge, social media, copywriting, pricing, strategy and selling.
One of the main categories that they say they struggle with, is where and how to find clients.
The reason why most people struggle to find clients is that they don’t have a clear understanding of who their ideal clients actually are.
Because you don’t just want any clients, you want ideal clients.
They struggle because:
- They think “I don’t have (or need) a niche or an ‘ideal client’”
- They don’t want to narrow their targeting (ie they want to market to everyone)
- They think they already know their ideal clients
- Or, they just haven’t come across this ‘ideal client’ process yet
If you’re struggling to get more clients, to know where to find more clients, how to market to them, how to create effective messaging and having them find you, the reason is probably that you haven’t done the necessary work around who your ideal clients are and what makes them tick. Or maybe you’ve tried to and struggled or you’re not using the information correctly.
If you don’t really know who you are trying to speak to then your message won’t land with the people you really want to reach. It, unfortunately, means a lot of your marketing efforts will not be working.
What are ideal clients?
You may have heard the term before, it’s pretty common now among the new style of business coaches working with more conscious business owners.
Ideal clients are people who you love to work with, they are people who are happy to pay the prices you want to charge and they are people who resonate with you and your values.
Even if you’re struggling to make enough money at the moment, you don’t want just any old clients, like the ones that drain you, or always ask for a discount or are just bloody awkward!
I promise you, you don’t want to work with them. No matter how desperate you are.
However, without knowing who your ideal clients are, what they want, what they struggle with and how you help them, marketing will feel really really difficult.
Your ideal client is NOT everyone, I promise you!
The foundations of business
I call understanding your ideal clients the foundational pieces of your business and marketing. The clearer you can get on these marketing foundations, the bigger and better you can build your business.
Think of it as foundations of a house! When you really understand your ideal clients, you will build solid foundations for your business. Then everything you do on top of that, the walls you build, the pretty windows you put in, the rooms you create, the furniture and décor you complete your house with (ie your marketing, social media, messaging etc) will be clearer and you’ll stand out from the crowd.
If you try to create marketing without the foundations of understanding your ideal clients, it’s like building a house on sand – it will be wobbly. You will feel that and so will the people you market to. That is off-putting, believe me!
How to better understand your ideal clients
I have a process which I take clients through, the basics of which I’m covering at the Masterclass within March’s Marketing Mentoring and Mastermind session. I’m not going to give that to you now because I think it requires some expert support and guidance. If I gave it to you, you may go away and do some work on it (or you may not) but it still may not work for you, unless you get it right.
You really can’t do this half-arsed, it’s too important and is worth doing well.
Doing this process and properly understanding your ideal clients will help you to massively improve your marketing and help you find more of your ideal clients and help them find you too!
I want to help you properly and guide you through that process either at the session in March or during a 1-2-1 Marketing Confidence Boost session (if you can’t make the group session or would prefer dedicated attention on your business).
However here’s the first step, so you can get started!
DEFINE: Who your ideal clients are
Think about the clients you enjoy working with or would most like to work with (if you’ve not worked with many clients yet). Define their common characteristics – which qualities crop up and again and again?
Think more in terms of ‘psychographics’ not ‘demographics’. Demographics are the old way of defining a target audience and are basic things like age, gender, job, family situation, marital status, where they live etc. These are a bit two-dimensional, although some are still important, for example, I work with women who have their own business.
Psychographics are more to do with people’s values, hopes and aspirations, lifestyles and opinions. So for example, my ideal clients are women who want to create a heart-aligned business, truly want to serve their clients and make a difference in the world, while also making a decent living. Using these metrics brings a richness to your defined ideal client.
Both are important.
For example: only defining your ideal clients as women in their 40s and 50s will make your marketing harder, as not all women in this age group will have the same situation, job, values, thoughts, issues etc. When you bring in psychographics as well, such as ‘women going through the menopause, who have children at home and a career’, you can see that you have more effectively defined your ideal client. And now you can talk directly to her, making your messaging clearer and more effective.
If you haven’t yet gone through a process of defining and understanding who your ideal clients are and what makes them tick, then you really must. It’s absolutely essential and will make ALL of the rest of your marketing easier and more effective.
You’ll get ideas for blogs, find copywriting easier and have your ideal clients find you! So you don’t have to do all the work.
Comment below
I hope that’s been useful. Please comment below and let me know what you come up with in this first step of defining who your ideal client is. Thank you.
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