Most marketing experts agree that it is important to understand your ideal client better than you understand yourself. Having a detailed understand of them helps you focus your marketing strategies and helps guide you to a successful sale, which at the end of the day is simply helping somebody.
Whilst the concept of understanding your ideal client may seem straight forward, how do you ever truly understand who they are?
What you’ll want to know
Before we dig into the how, you will need to get clear on what information you will need from your ideal client.
These three questions will help you uncover enough detail to move forward.
What’s their biggest challenge?
This information is crucial when putting together a marketing and sales strategy. The deeper you uncover the challenge, the deeper your understanding of your ideal client and how you can help them.
Let’s take a look at an example. Say for instance you own a Personal Training (PT) business that specialises in group running training. On the surface most people might assume that the PT should focus their marketing on weight loss or fitness. However, as the PT learns more about their ideal customer, they realise that there’s a deeper problem – a large number of people feel that they want a social community when they are training. They’ve been to a lot of running clubs and are sick of feeling like a number.
Armed with this information, the PT can now put together a marketing campaign that caters for people who are interested in running, training as a group and more specifically, that their product includes a strong social component. Their marketing may include taglines like “The Running Program for People Who Love Connecting to People.”
What type of language to they use?
When you create your marketing content, you will want to speak the language of your ideal client. Whether that be using “Gen Y” slang or professional lawyer jargon, your idea client will respond better when you talk their language.
Pay particular notice to how they word the questions they have, as this will leave clues to what types of phrases they will type into Google to search for an answers to those questions.
Also take note of phrases and wording styles they use when they are in conversation. This will also leave clues about what types of phrases they’ll type into Google and whether they will read your marketing content.
What are their interests?
Understanding your ideal client’s interests will help you gather indirect ways to get your message to your ideal client.
If you return to the example of the PT, they may discover that a lot of their ideal clients love to drink coffee. Armed with that knowledge, they can then find avenues to converse with their ideal client. For example, they may display flyers at local coffee shops or advertise in the coffee shop’s newsletter.
How to do it
Now that you have an understanding of the type of information you will need about your ideal client, it’s time to understand how to get it.
There are a myriad of ways to gather information from your ideal client – in this article you’re going to concentrate on a single method – Google Plus.
Google Plus (G+) is Google’s version of Facebook. According to the latest statistics, G+ has around 300 million monthly active users and this number is growing. It contains users, business pages and group – or communities in G+ speak. It’s these communities that hold the answers to discovering more about your ideal client.
Step 1. Join Google Plus
If you haven’t done so already, get a Google account. To do this, navigate to the Google Sign In page and create your account.
Once you have a Google Account, jump to the Google Plus page at plus.google.com.
Step 2. Create a Google Plus Business Page
When you are a G+ member, create a Google Plus page for your business. To do this, navigate to the Pages section of G+ (from the drop down menu under Home on the left hand area of the page), then click on “Get your page.” From here, follow the prompts to create your Business Page.
Step 3. Join Communities
This is where the magic happens.
Jump to the communities section of the left hand drop down menu. This allows you to search for a community that you wish to join and join that community.
If you’re finding the prospect of communities to be a little overwhelming then there are a couple of principles to follow:
- Join communities where you and your ideal client directly cross paths
Using the PT as an example, obvious communities might include the “Running” and “Running Injuries” groups. - Join communities where you and your ideal client indirectly cross paths
This is based on the interests of your ideal client, or types of business that would normally interact with your ideal client.
If you use the PT as an example, communities might include “Sydney Coffee Drinkers” and “Chiropractors.”
Please note, as you begin to understand more about your ideal client, there will be opportunities to join more communities.
Step 4. Watch and Contribute to Communities
When you have joined the G+ Communities, it’s time to gather information from and help your ideal client.
Have it as part of your daily routine to jump onto G+ and learn from your ideal client. Take note of the types of questions they are asking, the language they are using and what their interests are.
When you feel confident that you are in the right community, start posting questions in the community and start answering questions that others post. If you are answering in a way that your ideal client is getting benefit from your answers then pretty soon your ideal client will start to see you as an expert.
As an added bonus, as you are helping your ideal client, you are also learning about them for future use.
Step 5. Implement Your Learnings
As you start to uncover details about your ideal client, you can start to focus your marketing to attract them to your business. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Advertising material
- Website SEO keywords and descriptions
- The types of blogs that you write
- How to write lead magnets, and
- The type of content to nurture them with
A Free Set of Steak Knives
Although the majority of this article is focused on how to understand your ideal client for marketing purposes, there is something else you get for free from doing this process well.
Google loves businesses that contribute and loves businesses that are seen as an authority in a particular field. When Google loves your business, it’s more likely to favour your business when displaying search results.
Conclusion
I’m a firm believer in the saying “do what your competitors fear most.” This may include walking up to your ideal client on the street , or cold calling. In doing this, you will “earn the right” to take a simpler approach.
The process above is a simple way to learn about your ideal client and contribute back to society.
Take on this approach for 6-12 months and the results will be astounding!!