How to Identify Your Ideal Customer
Many small businesses operate on an “anyone, really” mentality to gaining new customers.
This is understandable, especially if your business is one that can help many types of business or people. You might also think that by not communicating a speciality or niche, you leave yourself open to a wider market and therefore, more opportunity.
While this is technically the case, it is not the best approach for effective selling. When trying to sell the services of our business, we must speak directly to people who may have a need for that service, and generic messaging doesn’t make people want to listen.
Therefore, to sell effectively, we must identify our ideal customer, and then speak to them in a laser focussed fashion.
Here are the ways in which to identify your ideal customer.
Analyse your current customer base
Have a look at your best and favourite customers and then identify the common traits between them. Factors to consider could be industry, company size, job title and demographics.
Define your customer Demographics (relevant in both B2C and B2B)
Define the basic demographic detail of your customer such as level of education, bias towards your service (i.e. do they think they already know it all), their age, gender and location.
Understand Psychology
Go beyond demographic and try to think of what the psychology of your ideal customer might be. This will include things like attitudes, behaviours, interests and their values. This way, you can start to build bonds by reflecting their psychology back to them.
Identify their pain points and needs
Determine the specific problems and challenges that your customers face. Think again to your existing customers. Why did they appoint you? What problem did you solve for them? Once you understand this, you can begin to talk about these pains and how your business solves the issues.
Analyse your customer behaviour
Look at how your best customers interact with you. How do they buy? What content do they respond to? What channels do they use? Then, when you figure this out, use those channels and more of the same content, to attract new and similar customers to you.
Conduct Surveys and Interviews
Speak to your existing customers and ask them why they appointed you in the first place. How do you fit into their business and help them solve their challenges. Why do they like you and use you over the competition.
Look at your competition
Who is their ideal customer? Who do they usually work with and how to they attract them? This will give you ideas and you may see similarities in your own customer base, too
Use data and analytics
If you have one, take a look at your CRM alongside your website analytics and other data sources. This will tell you where your customers are coming from, both in the world and via which channel. It should also tell you which product is most popular with that demographic – so that you begin to understand what product to sell to which customer.
What Next?
Once you have done these, use all the information to build your ideal customer avatar. I would suggest having two or three avatars and understand specifically the products these avatars buy, how to communicate with them, what do they respond to and what challenge do you solve for them.
Once you understand this, take action. Find these customers and talk to them about their pains and challenges and how your business can help them solve it. Reflect back to them the types of things that they want to hear using the knowledge you have gained from your profile and you’ll soon find more people are willing to listen and take note of your offering.
And, of course, if you need any help with any of this, you can always speak to us and we’ll be delighted to offer advice.
