Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Laying firm foundations is the safest way to build something strong. If you want a strong marketing campaign, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are and how best to communicate with them.

This is a common question that I’m asked. We all have limited resources for our marketing in terms of time and money, so the two main benefits of identifying and focusing on your ideal customer is that you can appeal to them in the places where they hang out, quicker and more effectively, and you can pinpoint the benefits of doing business with you.

Being specific in your marketing tactics keeps those limited resources from being wasted.
So, when you’re thinking about your ideal customer what are you taking into account?

• Are you a business to consumer, or business to business supplier?
• What size business would you like to appeal to?
• What type of consumer buys most regularly?
• Where are they located?
• Who are the decision makers?
• What or who are they already using?
• What is their pain, problem, fear, want, need, desire?
• Who are the most likely to refer you?
• What publications do they read?
• What are their turn-ons and turn-offs?
• What has stopped them achieving their goals?

You can use the answers to these questions to build a customer profile – you may have more than one, in which case your strategies and tactics may differ for each profile type.

Appealing to your ideal customer

Once you have a picture of who needs you or your product most, you can find the social media platforms they use, publish in the magazines or on the forums they read, attend the networking events they go to, or even print leaflets for letterbox delivery.

Whatever way your message reaches your ideal customer, you must always lead with the benefits. When you begin talking about how the features of your product or service solves problems for your customers then they will begin to lean towards you with interest. If you lead with technical information, boastful claims or heavy sales pitches they will switch off.

People buy from people, so if you have testimonials from happy customers, publish them where they will be seen by others. If you don’t yet have any, this could be an action point that helps you grow your customer base.

For more advice on running or growing your business, please visit my website, or get in touch for an hour of free business mentoring.

I hope this has been of use to you, Mike.

Mike Foster
The Entrepreneur's Mentor

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