I’m sure you could sell your products or services to a whole host of different client types, but that doesn’t mean that they are the best fit for you and vice versa.
A lot of expertise-driven businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone in their marketing materials, but when they do this, they’re effectively appealing to nobody.
We’re inundated with marketing messages on a daily basis and have become very good at ignoring the majority of them. You could compare this to the background noise you hear in a room full of people – we tend to just tune it out.
But when someone calls your name, your ears prick up and you pay attention.
We must strive for that kind of specificity in our marketing so our ideal clients know we are speaking directly to them.
It’s very difficult to create marketing messages that appeal to someone if you don't know who you are trying to reach in the first place. So to give your marketing the best chance of success, it’s important to be really clear about who you are trying to attract.
Now it may seem like you’re limiting the opportunity available to you by being this specific, but this exercise is all about pursuing a particular type of client you want to work with. It doesn’t necessarily mean that each of your clients has to match the profile of your ideal client exactly.
But how do we decide who our ideal client is? Well firstly it’s wise to consider the characteristics that make a client an ideal one. An ideal client should:
- greatly value the outcome your offering enables
- have the ability to pay the rates you want to charge
- be in a market that’s either steadily growing or fast growing
And finally, you must enjoy working with them. It’s all well and good for them to meet the above criteria, but if you don’t get fulfillment out of an engagement, it’s not a suitable long term option.
Once you have chosen your ideal client, your next job is to create a marketing plan to attract them to your business.
