Some of you have e-mailed me and asked “How do I know who my ideal customer is?”
Knowing Your Ideal Customer Is Crucial
Last week I sent you this video talking all about how you build your business through marketing, where you should spend your money, and how much you spend. And one of the key things I told you was you need to know your ideal customer and a bunch of you e-mailed me and said how do I figure that out.
This is something I’ve personally spent a lot of time and money to master. I do this exercise reguarly in my own businesses, and I spend a lot of time helping many of my accelerators with it as well. In fact for a number of them it’s on of their current 90 day projects to get this absolutely clear, so we can really get more qualified and targeted leads into their business.
Your Ideal Customer Blueprint
There are three key things you need to know about your customer. It’s what I call the ideal customer blueprint to come to who your ideal customer is.
1. Physical Characteristics
The first thing you need to know is the physical characteristics. We’ve all heard about target market where they have these certain demographics.
They’re male, they’re female, they’re this age to this age. But generally you need to understand who your physical characteristics are first.
Things like…
- How much money they’re earning
- Are they male or are they female
- What age are they?
- What they like to do?
- Are they the Business Owner, A Manager or an Employee
When I say what Age, I’m not talking about what age range. I want you to choose one date, one year, one age. How much money they earn, what they like to do.
These characteristics are the kinds of things that if you used Facebook advertising, you can actually target in specifically on these kinds of characteristics.
2. Emotional Characteristics
The second thing you need to know is the emotional characteristics.
You see, we don’t just buy on logic. We buy due to emotional reasons. Everything we do is for an emotional reason, whether we realize it or not.
So what is the emotional reason, what are the emotions going on, in your ideal customer when they come to you to buy? What is the emotional reason they want your product or service?
You ultimately solve a problem for them. How are they feeling emotionally? Are they feeling stressed, are they excited, are they frustrated, are they upset? Are they upset with all the things out there?
Are they frustrated because there are so many options, they don’t know what to choose? What are their emotional characteristics?
3. Their Story
Then the third and the really key thing that most people forget is you must create a story.
This is where you’ve gotten to know your ideal customer as a “profile” now you need to attach a story to create a “person”. Once you know them as a person you can then write what I call a love letter. This is where you actually write a love letter to your ideal customer showing how much you understand them, what’s going on in their lives, and here’s how you can help.
You must remember that buyers are individual people, they have lives, there are events occurring in their every day life, there is a story behind them – understand it, connect with them, and I you’ll create better products, provide better services and help more customers in a way that is transformational and impact their lives in a far greater way.
I hope that served you. To be able to identify your ideal customer you must know their physical characteristics, you need to know their emotion characteristics, and you have to understand the story behind them.
Any questions, post them in the comments, or if you want some more specific help see if Accelerator is right for you.
Carl is the Author of Red Means Go! and founder of Business Builders Academy. He invests in and runs a number of businesses, and regularly teaches business skills through online training and live speaking events.
