Want to Grow Your Business Faster? Who is your ideal client?
Often, when I meet business owners and ask, “Who is your ideal client?” They tell me they “can work with anybody, who …” It is difficult to identify how to refer people or businesses to a business if you don’t know exactly who they serve and how they serve them. What makes this question hard to answer for entrepreneurs?
Often, it is the fear of losing potential business. Business owners are not comfortable don’t want to limit their customer pool with “I help these people and here is how…..” And, that can be a fatal flaw in any business. How does knowing whom you serve best help you in building your business? This article offers three important ways you can benefit from a very clear picture of your best customers.
Want More and Better Referrals? Get Specific.
When you know your ideal audience (your perfect client), you can be very clear about what problems they have and/or how you help them solve those problems. Having clarity, you speak directly to those customer pain points. From there, anyone you share this information with instantly becomes a potential client or referer of new clients.
A client, a realtor told me, they serve people who are motivated to move, the best. What do they do that helps those clients specifically? In this case, it may be they have the systems in place to support a quick turnaround in a residential sale. They can talk to the problems faced by homeowners who wanted to move within a short time-frame and how they help solve those problems and remove any roadblocks to a quick sale.
When I hear that, if I interact with someone who wants to sell quickly, I will refer them without hesitation (as I know the realtor’s professionalism). This is a win-win as the client is in the sweet spot for my client and therefore the client will benefit by getting good results and superior results.
Another business owner, a photographer always says, “my clients are women 40 -60, married with children with disposable income.” It doesn’t get much more specific than that and if you know someone like that, their face probably comes to your mind immediately, right?
Like Attracts Like
Another way having a picture of your ideal client can help grow your business is that people generally connect with people that they are similar to in some or many ways. In other words, your best clients probably know other people like them who may benefit from your services.
Or, if you have a way of connecting regularly with those ideal clients, make that a staple in your process for getting new clients. The photographer who is looking for 40 -60 year old women with families and disposable income may look at private schools or sports leagues and country clubs, etc.
Several business owners I know have a luxury or high ticket product or service have joined a country club and skyrocketed their business. But, people are affiliated in all kinds of ways, so really think about how your clients spend their time and it will trigger new ways of building relationships.
Save Time and Money
And, a third way that being specific about your target audience can benefit you is your marketing efforts, saving time and money.
Several years ago working with a networking group, several people suggested making more use of social media for our marketing efforts. Having done the research, I shared that our members were still really not using the tools that we were discussing and we should focus our effort on what we know was getting to our members. Putting time and effort into marketing in a place where your audience isn’t will not be effective for getting more people like them.
Recently, working with a client, who bought ads through a social media tool, I asked whom did you target for your audience? And, they listed several traits that did not align with who they typically serve in their business and that they were not very happy with the results of their ad spending. My question was, “who have most of your clients been? Have they fit the traits you picked?”
When I asked those questions and the client thought about the answers, she realized that it makes more sense when you have the opportunity, to target people you are serving well already rather than a brand new audience. You know what they need and how to talk to them and that they already like working with you. And, if you want to go after a new audience, get a few clients in that audience, so that you can “speak” directly to other people like them in your marketing efforts.
Who is your ideal client and how has knowing that helped you grow your business? Share your comments.