Have you ever thought of working with a select group of clients? Many businesses offer a wide range of products or services to a wide range of people or companies but struggle to narrow their market focus. Instead of targeting a broad population, get good at serving narrowly defined market segments.
In any marketing conversation (or one that you hope to be effective) it’s common to hear that you must know your target market. But within every target market is a segment of people who you are best suited to serve, who value what you do and are very profitable for your business. This group of buyers represent your ideal client.
Trying to be “all things to all people” doesn’t work. If you don’t know what your ideal client looks like in the most specific way possible, how can you market to them? It is possible to have multiple ideal clients, just make sure that you develop targeted marketing tactics for each. Basing your work on specific buyer profiles/personas prevents you from sitting in your office just making stuff up, which is the cause of most ineffective marketing.
Most marketing today is target market-centric not ideal client-centric. And while the first one is important, it’s equally important to understand the clients that you are well suited to serve and that you want to work with. This will make a win-win for both you and your client. Ask yourself the following:
Take into account your best accounts today and what makes them ideal for you so that you can apply it to attracting new clients in the future.
Segment Your Client Base
Creating a spreadsheet of your clients and focusing on segmenting your client base between normal accounts and your most successful accounts is how to identify your ideal customer. Your best clients or most successful accounts should have the following two key behaviors: they are profitable and also refer business to you.
Think about whom your 10 best customers are and what you need to do to attract 10 more just like them!
Dive Deeper For Ideal Client Characteristics
From your client base above start looking at the characteristics of these successful accounts or best clients. You’re searching for any common characteristics that are shared by this client base.
Defining your ideal client:
Ideal customer profiles can be created through research, surveys, and interviews of your current client base. That includes a mix of clients, prospects, and those outside your contacts database who might align with your ideal client.
Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop ideal customer profiles:
The following questions are organized into those categories, but feel free to customize this list and remove or add more questions that may be appropriate for your target customers.
Now armed with the information of what your best clients or most successful accounts look like and their characteristics, develop a detailed profile of your ideal clients. Then, show up in the right places (social media channels, networking events, publications, search engine, mobile) at the right time (when profitable clients are looking to solve a problem or research a solution). You may be featured in fewer publications and meet with fewer people, but you’ll close more sales.
Today’s buyers require more expertise, interaction, trust, and maintenance than ever before. So don’t waste your time courting the wrong clients. Consistently add something to the conversation: leads will listen, suspects will engage, and prospects will buy. You just have to make sure you’re talking to the right people first.
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.