Define Your Ideal Client: Day 4 of 21 Days to Build a Better Brand

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Your goal as a brand is to build authentic, meaningful relationships with your clients or customers. When you do this well you create raving fans and customers for life. In today’s lesson, you’ll learn how to create your ideal client profile.

Ideal Client, Target Market, and Niche

There are three big factors you need to define if you want to create a business that really resonates with people – your ideal client, your target market, and your niche. Today focuses on the first part of the equation, your ideal client.

The Importance of Understanding Your Ideal Client

If you want to build meaningful relationships with your clients or customers, you first need to know how to relate to them. It’s not enough to know their age, gender, or annual income. You need to get to know them at a deeply personal level. You need to know what they value in life, what they dream about, and what they’re afraid of.

When you meet them where they are they will start to see you as an understanding soul. They’ll see you as someone who gets them, someone who can help them. This is how you build trust.

Visualize One Person

I have a picture of a woman hanging up on my wall right next to my computer monitor. She’s blonde, she’s pretty, and she’s smiling. She’s a friend of mine and her name is Elisabeth.

My wife walked by my desk the other day and was like, “Um, why do you have a picture of Elisabeth hanging on the wall?” I just chuckled and got back to working. But really, here’s why: Elisabeth is an entrepreneur – she owns a productivity consulting business. She helps C-level executives get organized and more productive so they can get more done. To those executives, she’s a rock star. To me, Elisabeth is my ideal client.

When creating your ideal client profile, it helps to visualize one real person. This should be someone you know like your best customer or a friend who you feel might be a great fit for what you offer. The important thing here is that it’s someone you know personally. When you direct your messages or product offerings to that one real person, your message is crystal clear, laser-focused, and more authentic.

When I write a blog post, record a podcast, or create a new course, I do it for Elisabeth.

The Basics

It may help to know some basic information about your ideal client or customer. Some of this basic data might be gender, age, job title, annual income, or geographic location. Depending on your product or service offering, some of this information might be very important. If you own a local pie shop, geographic data is extremely relevant. For Elisabeth, job title and annual income are vital stats for her ideal clients.

When it comes to creating their ideal customer profile, most businesses stop here at this very basic level of information. They don’t go below the surface to really get to know and understand their audience. In order to build trust and a meaningful relationship, you need to dig a little deeper.

Go Deeper

Once you know a few basic facts about your ideal client or customer, your next step is to go deeper. What do they believe in? What do they stand for? What are their needs and desires? What do they dream about? What are they afraid of? What keeps them up at night with worry?

When you can answer some of these questions, you will have a much deeper understanding of your ideal client. You’ll know how to meet them where they are. They will understand you better. They will be more engaged with you. They will see you as the person who can help them better than anyone else. They will be naturally attracted to your brand. They will become raving fans and customers for life. And then, they will tell all their friends about you.

How to Find Information

If you know the one person you are visualizing as your ideal client, you probably know quite a bit about them. If there’s something you don’t know, ask them! I called Elisabeth and had a 30-minute interview where I asked her all kinds of questions. I got to know a lot more about her and now I can create blog posts or courses that really help her.

Here are a few ideas for finding information about your ideal client or customer:

• Look through comments they’ve written on your website and on your social media posts.
• Search social media for your topic and people talking about your topic. What are they saying? What problems do they have? What answers are they looking for?
• Survey your current audience – Create an online survey and send it out via email or share it on social media.
• Look for forums or Facebook groups specific to your audience and your topic.
• Have real-life conversations with your customers or people you know who might be a good fit.
• Go with your gut! Sometimes you just have to go with what you feel and get close enough.

You are looking for insights, surprises, changes to ideas you already have about them. You also want to speak their language, so use the words and phrases they use.

Day 4 Action Item—Define Your Ideal Client or Customer

Today you’ll create your ideal client or ideal customer profile. Go somewhere where you won’t be easily distracted, grab a notebook or your 21 Days to Build a Better Brand Workbook and get to writing.

• What does their life look like today? Take a quick snapshot of their average day. Where do they work, what’s their family like, where do they shop, eat, hang out, what movies or TV shows are they into?
• What do they believe? Their beliefs should line up beautifully with your manifesto. What do they believe in? What do they stand for? What do they stand against? What do they love?
• What do they need? Needs are problems people need help solving. If your pipes are clogged, you need a plumber to fix them. If your car won’t start, you need to get it repaired by a mechanic. What needs or problems does your ideal client have that you help solve? What are they struggling with right now? What keeps them up at night?
• What do they desire? Desires are your customer’s aspirations and goals. Where do they want to be in the future? How can you help them get there? What do you provide that helps them move closer to their desires? How do you help them reach their goals?
• What is their favorite quote? If they had a mantra for living their life, what would that be?
• What does the transformation look like? Your brand should solve a problem for your customer and when this happens they are transformed. What do they have or not have before their experience with your brand and then after? What is their emotional state before and after your brand? What does an average day look like before and after their experience with your brand?

Answer as many of these questions as possible. If you get stuck, no worries. Just move on to the next one and come back to it later or skip it altogether. The idea is to try to get into their head as much as possible. Walk a mile in their shoes.

Coming up: Tomorrow you’ll learn where to find more people like your ideal client—this is your target market.

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