How to Identify Your Ideal Client
Mike Miller
Helping MSPs attract more leads and close more sales by aligning Sales and Marketing
Do you know the first thing you must do before you start marketing and selling, get to know your ideal client persona. Call them, your persona, your avatar, your ideal client profile, your target market, your ideal target your market, ideal client profile, persona.
How to Identify Your Ideal Customer Profile
Whatever you want to call it, you’ve got one. The simple truth is it doesn’t matter how old your businesses, it can be a day, a week, a year, 100 years. You need to know who your ideal client is, where they hang out and what challenges they’re having. It’s the core of your marketing and your business. You make money by helping your ideal client, profile, persona, whatever, make money, solve problems, that’s how you get paid. They give you money, you provide solutions.
And if you’re even just a little bit interested in making money and growing your wealth, you will want to know who your ideal client profile is, and be curious to know the problems and challenges they have that you can help them with.
Let’s put it in context. Let’s look at the client magnet system map. The client magnet system is the complete model for uniting and aligning sales and marketing and creating an inbound and outbound client acquisition engine in your business that attracts more leads, boosts sales and energizes your growth.
And remember, you want to align sales and marketing because they’re just like the wheels of a car. You want them working together moving in the same direction. So you get this and not this. Here’s the breakdown.
There’s four layers or stages, tools, traffic, client acquisition, and post sale. We’ll go over all of it in future videos. But in this video, we’re discussing ideal client persona in the traffic layer in the middle of the map.
Remember, every part of your business is built to attract and serve your ideal client persona. It’s in the center of the map because it’s the heart of your business. And knowing your ICP is essential for doing business and making any client acquisition system work.
Until you know who your target market is, you’ll never be able to market to them effectively. There’s two things you need to do to nail your ideal client persona research and develop an ideal client persona profile.
Now if you’re like most business owners, this simple two step process is going to feel like given birth, but without pain, just headaches and exhaustion. But stick with it because this is how you make money, grow your business and skyrocket your success and if your business is already growing.
Imagine what could happen if you throw gas on a fire that’s already burning. Well, figuratively speaking, of course, because that’s dangerous. Keep it to business where it’s safe and profitable. Okay, let’s get to it.
Research
You need to know everything you can about your ideal client persona. Gather all your testimonials, reviews, case studies and emails from clients. Look for common themes, make a spreadsheet and keep track of all the positive and negative statements.
Make a count column so you can tally how many different people said the same thing. The more people tell you something the more important it is. Remember for services you want to focus more on testimonials and case studies and not reviews. Reviews are great. products, but gather it all and use what you can.
What if I’m a new business? What if I don’t have case studies or reviews?
Your competitors do.
Go through your competitors testimonials, reviews and case studies and look for all the positives and the negatives catalog with their ICP says on your spreadsheet, and then tally how many times they say roughly the same thing. Take it like a raccoon stealing cat food.
That way you’ll know what’s important to buyers and how to pitch your product or service to get their attention. Once you’ve researched identified your ICPs challenges, opinions, likes, dislikes and ideal outcomes.
Then you’re ready for step two, develop your ICP persona profile. In step two, we take all the information you’ve gathered along with your guns thinks impressions and firsthand experience and organize it into a profile of a character, your ideal client persona.
Using the ICP persona worksheet, I put a link to the ICP persona worksheet you need to complete in the description. Remember, you’re building a profile of your ideal client persona. You want to develop this profile out so completely, that you know this person at a deep level, you know what they’re thinking, you know what they want and desire.
And you know, how they think about themselves and their abilities. This document gives you direct insight into their mind, and personality. And because this document is compiled from the actual thoughts, feelings and emotions of your target audience, it’s accurate and powerful.
All right before you start filling out your worksheet Let me just let you in on a little secret, you are going to finish your ideal client persona worksheet today. In fact, it will never be complete. You need to revisit it weekly and add to it, you’ll also come to realize that you have more than one ICP because they have different challenges or are in a different industry.
In that case, you’d want to add a second or a third persona worksheet and keep adding to it and updating it continually as you learn more and more.
The only rule is, for each product or service you have, you should only have three to five personas any more than that and it suggests that you’re going too wide and trying to serve too many people, which means your message gets diluted and loses power and you need that power to get attention in a crowded marketplace.
Okay, let’s go through the sections of the worksheet and I’ll share insight on them. Demographic info, the first section is your demographic information.
This is all this Typical identity level stuff you’d think about when identifying your ideal client persona. Are they male or female? What’s their title or occupation? Are they married? Do they have any children, you’ll also want to find a picture someone who looks like them and give them a name.
Their name can be simple and straightforward, like Stacey Jackson, or it can show a little identity like grandpa Kurt or it can represent their personality or challenges like deal hunter Dave stuck Sam or losing money Larry.
The demographics section is useful when you want to target your ideal client persona with advertising. Typically, the demographic info is the only select or criteria you’ll have available. If you find your source of advertising provides other selectors, then go ahead and add them to this section.
Problems and Challenges
In this section we list out their challenges and fears but we separated two ways.
First, by business and personal, then buy current conditions and perceived future conditions.
The reason we include both business and personal challenges into this section and not just business is because we’re all humans. And if we have a problem in one area of our life, it affects other areas of our life as well.
So for instance, business owners who are challenged with slow or weak sales will often have problems sleeping, they may be anxious, and fear losing their house and everything they’ve worked so hard for.
Those are personal challenges that happen as a result of the business challenge. Therefore, business and personal issues cannot be separated as long as they’re consequences of business challenges. personal challenges are in context.
The problems challenges section is useful when you write content, emails, sales letters, and advertisements. The problems and challenges that your ideal client persona is experiencing are Saw by your product or service, so you need to ensure that you’re touching on them with every communication.
Personality, Direction and Desired Outcomes
I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet or not because took me a while to figure it out. But we humans live in the present, let’s spend most of our time and mental energy in the past and the future, we strive for a future that’s better than our present state.
But we’re either propelled or slowed. By the way we think about our past. In this section, you seek to understand the future your ideal client persona wants to achieve.
And you also try to understand what they hold dear, important and meaningful to their lives, while also understanding their beliefs about themselves, their business and the world around them.
Do they have any rules for themselves or or others that must be followed or adhered to, for instance, do they believe friends always have each other’s backs or money grows on trees, or a rock star. those beliefs will shape who they are and their behaviors.
The personality direction and desired outcome section is also important when writing content, emails and advertising copy for your business.
People like people like them, because they understand them. And they think they know them. It creates trust, and people buy from people they know like, and trust, trusted advisors and information sources. Your ideal customer personas getting information from somewhere.
Who is it? Where is it? What books do they read that no one else would read? What magazines do they read? Are there any tailor to their industry? If there’s an industry magazine that a good portion of your target market reads every month, then you better be in it? What websites blogs or YouTube channels do they pay attention to list them all out and add to this section as you learn more. The reason this section is important is because it tells you where to advertise
When Focused on Your Solution
So as you probably realized, each section does something important. two sections focus on targeting your ideal client persona with advertising while three sections focus on the message, and subsequently the offer you’ll use to entice your ideal client persona to purchase.
This final section of the worksheet focuses on the other side of selling your products or services, not the problem it solves but their criteria for purchase their common objections and their expected benefits.
We want to know if there’s a criteria for purchase in their minds, such as if it’s a service does it have to have reporting, if it’s software, does it have to have specific features, what has to be included in the offer for to eat be considered? What are their common objections? Is it price? Is it timing? Why should they do business with you now?
And finally, what benefits should they expect? Of course your solution solves their problems and eases their challenges. But how fast does it do it? How completely? How much money could they save? Or make? How much will their business grow? How will their employees coworkers or bosses feel? Think about their physical and mental benefits? They may have a 20% surge in growth but they also have peace of mind and a feeling of accomplishment.
Well, that wraps up the discussion of the worksheet but before I let you go, I know this video is all fun and games because I’m trying to keep your attention while I teach you important marketing principles. But I’m serious about this.
So listen closely.
Once I teach you how to get followers and you generate leads from Facebook or Google or even direct mail. You’ll know how, but so will everyone else who listens.
It’s not the secret settings or special techniques that make your business blow up and become a cash magnet. The true differentiator is your message and offer and how attractive it is to your ideal client persona.
So don’t overlook this step of identifying your ideal customer persona using the Client Magnet System ICP persona worksheet. It’s vital to your success.
Oh, and by the way, if you’d like to learn more about developing an ideal client persona, let me know. I can show you how to research and go through this worksheet within depth examples, but I want to make sure it’s what you want, would like to see so let me know.
With that. I’ll say arrivederci and we’ll see in the next one.
Until then, take it advantage of your opportunities and remember, free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.