The best marketing campaigns are very focused, specific and segmented, and they require an ideal customer profile.
The ideal client is a client who understands your value, is happy to pay you, and is excited to work with you. This is a client that you are happy to work with now and want to continue working with in the future. Your ideal client profile is a representation of your real ideal clients based on data and research. It’s not a wish list of a client that doesn’t exist. When gathering data and information for your ideal client profile, it’s best to be as specific as possible and include as much detail as possible.
Here are nine ways to look at and evaluate data to create your ideal customer profile:
Demographics of your ideal client
Demographics explain who your ideal customer is. A demographic profile is a set of objective, factual, statistical data about a specific group of people, often used by companies to segment and target their marketing for better results. This data is similar to the data often found in census documents. The first step in solidifying your ideal customer profile is to get a clear idea of who your ideal customer is and determine their demographic profile, including:
- Age
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Income
- Amount of loans
- Landlord/tenant
- Marital status
- Geographic location
- Number of children
- Type of vehicle
- Occupation
- Level of education
Psychographics of your ideal customer
The next step to understanding who your ideal customer is is to create a psychographic profile based on the demographic profile. Psychographics are data about a specific group of people that focus on attitudes, aspirations, interests, lifestyle, and other psychological criteria. This data explains why customers buy from you and their motivation to buy. Unlike the objective facts of demographics, psychographics are more sensitive and focus on soft information. A psychographic profile provides a deeper subjective understanding of who your ideal customer is and how they think.
It covers things like:
- Thinking and attitudes
- Beliefs and opinions
- Aspirations, goals, dreams and wishes
- Interests (parenting advice, pet ownership, traveling, wellbeing, weight loss)
- Entertainment (hobbies, books, shopping, restaurants, TV shows, movies, how they spend their free time)
- Personality and values
- Lifestyle and priorities
- How they spend their money
- Anxieties and fears
Ideal customer behavior analysis
Behavior analysis is the process of understanding the behavior of a specific group of people. In an ideal customer profile application, this is based on demographic data and psychological information to see how they make decisions about what to buy, when to buy and how to buy. A behavioral analysis of the ideal customer focuses solely on their behavior and actions towards what you are selling and offering. Here are some of the things you’ll see in a behavioral analysis of the ideal customer profile:
- Internal marketing data such as what types of emails they open most often, what blog posts are read most often, what email subject lines work best, what social media posts have the most shares
- Analyzing data to determine what action, email, blog post, sales page, ad, etc. triggered sales
- Real feedback – good and bad – from customers about their experience with your brand, products and services, both online and offline.
- When sales increased and why – time of year, holiday, special promotion
- Find out why loyal customers keep buying and what motivates new customers
- Who uses your product/service the most, how they use it, when they use it (time of day, day of week, frequency)
- How potential customers gather information before making a purchase
- How they are influenced by price, quality, convenience and prestige
The story of the ideal customer
Another way to truly understand your ideal customer and where they are in the buying process is to understand their backstory and be able to tell that story in a compelling way that resonates with similar people. Your ideal customer’s story is the story of how they got to where they are today. You need to know where they started, what challenges they faced, what they accomplished, and where they are now. By understanding exactly where they came from, you can segment your market stories and messages to resonate with potential new customers. When they resonate with your message and you feel like you’ve “got” them and what they need, it’s much easier to close the sale.
Target the ideal customer
Many marketers will tell you to sell based on benefits, not features. Or they’ll advise you to go for benefits and keep an eye on features. Or they might even talk about how benefits target the emotions behind buying decisions and features feed the logic behind the buying decision.
All of these tips and approaches are valid, but to create the most effective marketing messages and promotional texts, you can’t stop there. You need to go one step further to fully understand the benefits or the final destination your ideal customers want to reach.
Describing the benefits of your product or service is the first step. Then you need to look at what impact each benefit has on them and their life or business. Again, what is the benefit of the benefit? What is the ultimate reward and goal they dream of achieving?
The story of your future ideal client
Once you know your ideal client’s story and their dream goal, it’s time to write a story about what they can achieve in the future if they hire you, buy from you, or subscribe to you.
A compelling and compelling future story makes your defined psychographics work by telling the benefits your products or services bring, how those benefits will improve and change your ideal client’s life and/or business, and what they will accomplish if they decide to invest in you.
Your ideal client’s future story brings to life your ideal clients’ journey right now to where they most want to be, and illustrates how your product or service can help them get there.
Ideal customer objections
Objections are an inevitable part of any sales process. Whether it’s the need to ask or consult with your spouse, more time to think about it, the desire to do more research, the need for more money, lack of time, fear of judgment, or even too much effort, at some point a potential client will have objections and consider saying “no.”
If you take the time to dig deep and get a clear understanding of the most common objections that potential clients may have and the reasons why, you will be able to counter these objections in advance. This provides the necessary emotional confidence and factual grounding in your marketing messages and promotional texts.
Risks of the ideal customer
Just as you need to look at the benefits your ideal clients will receive when they decide to invest in you, you also need to consider the risks they may face, including positive risk and negative risk.
Positive risk: these are risks that have a positive outcome including the risk of getting too many clients, making so much money that they will need an investment strategy, boredom due to lots of free time.
Negative risk: these are risks that have a negative outcome, including the risk of missing an opportunity, losing new business, falling behind others, feeling overworked, feeling stressed, financial turmoil.
By knowing what they risk gaining and what they risk losing, you can target your marketing messages and calls to action, and segment your audience to speak directly to a specific ideal customer profile.
A day in the life of your ideal client
Another great way to get to know your ideal client is to identify a “day in the life of your ideal client.” Create a plan or timeline of what a typical day looks like for your ideal client. Identify things like:
Do they wake up early and have time for coffee and reading before starting their work day, or do they toggle their alarm clock three times before getting out of bed?
- Do they eat a healthy breakfast or do they run out of the house and eat something on the way?
- Do they drive their kids to school? Do they pick them up?
- Do they bring their lunch to work or go out for lunch?
- How many work meetings do they have? How many phone calls do they make? Do they have an office or special work area at home?
- Do they cook dinner, eat at a restaurant, or order take-out? Do they prepare food in advance? Do they eat fresh or frozen food?
- How do they relax in the evening after work? Do they watch TV, read, just chat with friends on social media, play with their kids, go for walks, play sports?
- What time do they go to bed?
- What are they focused on? What are they worrying about? What causes them stress? What causes frustration?
Knowing what a day in the life of your customer looks like is extremely valuable when developing the marketing stories you tell in blogs, presentations, sales and website pages, and sales conversations. Why? Because you’ll be able to connect with your ideal customers on a more personal level with stories that position them as the protagonist.
