The truth about your ideal client; a deeper look
Our previous blog post touches on this topic - where we walk about ‘How to attract your ideal customer to your business online’. This dove a little into how to find your ideal client avatar (ICA) and what things you want to learn about them, in order to understand them. The purpose of doing this is to have effective copy on your website, so that you’re able to communicate well to your ICA.
But in this post we will go deeper into what makes your customers tick, and how to really understand their needs and wants as a consumer.
By the way we’ve got a YouTube short on this topic too! Head over to our YouTube channel to have a quick watch!
What is an ICA?
This is the person for which your service or product was created (either with or without you knowing it)! When you’re in the process of creating your brand & website, you want to have this ICA in mind, almost as your muse. This is because you will be designing it for their taste in mind.
Who is your ICA?:
You want to grab yourself a pen & paper and start answering the following basic questions about who your ideal client is:
What is their profession - e.g. are they in a full time job? Are they an entrepreneur? A business owner?
What is their age?
What is their gender? (This may be irrelevant for you, as you would want to work with both men AND women)
What is their marital/family status demographic? - e.g. are they married, single, do they have children or not?
What are their interests and hobbies? - e.g. what do they enjoy/hate/love, are they introverts/extroverts?
What’s the Geography - e.g. where do they live, or do they travel around?
What are their business pain points?
What are their fears?
We actually have a free video training for you which covers an in-depth look into who your ideal client is! You can also download our bonus ideal client questionnaire, print and use it as your worksheet (saves you from grabbing that pen & paper!).
A deeper understanding of your ICA
Pain points and fears
Following on from the last two points above, what you’re doing as a service or product provider is addressing your client’s pain point(s). This could be (a few examples):
A lack of time
A lack of knowledge on something, or lack of expertise
Lack of productivity
Cannot find the high quality of product elsewhere (but you can provide)
Financial issues
And these are just to cover very overarching non-specific issues. You could probably pick one of these and dive a lot deeper.
Another thing you could do is address a fear or challenge they’re facing. Client fears are something which can be quite hard to overcome, and it’s really worth spending time looking into these. Once a customer builds a resistance wall up because they've let their fears take over, it becomes more and more challenging for you as the product or service provider to enroll them into your solution for them.
Examples of fears can be the following, which may prevent them from buying from you:
Customers worried about making the same mistakes
Customers worried about spending money and seeing no results
Customers not recognising your brand or product
Negative reviews or testimonials
Customers worried about their data security or theft
The list can once again, go on, or get more detailed. The sooner you can learn these about a potential customer, the sooner you can begin to tailor your own brand and website messaging to address them.
Favorite brands and shops
Your ideal clients will have their favorite brands which they like to buy from, and shops they like to go to. These can give you a very good idea as to their financial situation, personal interests, but more importantly, what makes them purchase on an emotional level. What makes them tick?
Have a think about your own purchases. What makes you buy from the brands & shops you buy from? Is it to solve a particular problem? How do you feel afterwards?
When people make purchases, they're doing so to achieve a particular result, such as solve a specific problem. What you want to do as a business, is to look past the superficial reason(s), and consider what kind of transformation your ideal client or customer is looking to have.
Is it to look, or feel a certain way?
Is it to improve their lives somehow?
Is it to improve their health?
Is it to improve their own environment?
It is that feeling of being changed for the better, which will drive your clients to make their purchases. And when it comes to developing your brand message, you really want to hone in on addressing this end result.
CHALLENGES
This can overlap a little with your client’s pain points too, which we discussed earlier in this blog post. But you also want to start making a list of your ICA’s struggles and challenges both in life and in their work.
Examples of this could be:
Trying to navigate parenthood and their work
A lack of technical or creative expertise
Cannot find sufficient time
A lack of knowledge in a certain field
Transformation
When your clients and customers buy from you it's because they’re often buying your confidence. Confidence that you can help them solve a problem they’re experiencing, and achieve some sort of transformation in their lives.
What we mean by this is, that they’re buying into a dream that they have, or wanting to achieve that ‘wow’ factor!
Have a think about what that might be in your industry and for your clients and customers. Regardless of whether you’re a product or service based business, we can guarantee that if you dig deep enough you’ll come up with some great ideas!