How Focusing On Your Ideal Customer Drives Results in Marketing Your Service-Based Business.
If you have been coaching, or running a service-based business for a little while, but you aren’t attracting the right clients yet… maybe it’s time to look at WHO you are attracting, and HOW you are attracting them through your current marketing strategy.
First, it’s essential to know who your ideal customer is… not just a demographic.
I know this can be confusing, but when you are talking about marketing, especially content marketing for service-based businesses, you must have an ideal customer in mind. An ideal customer is different than a demographic. How? I’m so glad you asked.
With a demographic scenario, you are choosing a people group.
Ex: moms ages 35-50 who have a career outside the home.
VS:
An ideal customer is just 1 person you would LOVE to work with.
Ex: Marcy is a mom of 2 young adult children. She lives in the suburbs. She is is recently divorced. She loves her career as a hairdresser. She is an empty nester, her kids are grown and out of the house. She cries sometimes thinking about how time has gone too fast and she has missed out on so much of her kids lives because of her commitment to her career. Now she is forced into starting over after losing her husband too. She feels like a hot mess most of the time, and isn’t sure how to move forward in her life.
What she wants most is to learn how to transition through peri-menopause while managing the emotions of being an empty nester and overcoming the emotions around being single again after the end of a 20-year marriage.
The reason having an ideal customer is SO important is that now you are able to pinpoint their needs, and offer solutions!
Perhaps your specialty is working with people who have gone through a divorce. You can really dig deep and find Marcy’s problems and ambitions and write content created specifically to HER.
- Encouragement when they feel like they failed at marriage
- Managing emotions
- Letting go of other people’s opinions on divorce
- Managing adult kids and their feelings on the breakup
- How to keep a good relationship with your ex after the fact
- Starting over with a fresh perspective on dating
- How to begin dating again after 20 years of marriage
- How to find happiness by yourself after a divorce
- How to manage finances on your own after having a 2 income household
- What it looks like to attract the right person
Do you see how that type of content is going to speak right to the soul of the person in the ideal customer scenario? Those may look a lot different than a woman who has grade-school kids at home and is wanting a new career. Even though they are BOTH moms, they are in VERY different places in their lives.
From this perspective, you can learn where divorced women hang out… what FB groups are they in? What types of podcasts might they listen to. Look at other people in the space that serve the same type of person. Take a peek into the comments they get and what people are asking there. Figure out how you can best help them. The more you reach out to your ideal customers, the more you’ll learn about them.
Do a marketability test: are they out there? Search Google and see if there are other coaches helping this type of person. See how many FB groups are serving them. I did a quick FB search for Marcy above and found over 30 groups I could join to learn more about her… find out where she hangs out and help her to connect with me.
BONUS POINTS if you start to make a spreadsheet or note about HOW exactly they phrase things. Then Use this in your marketing strategy. Talk how they talk, they will think you are talking DIRECTLY to them.
So what steps can you take to find your ideal customers once you know who they are?
I’m so glad you asked:
- If you are JUST starting out, you may not know your ideal customers until you work with some people. THAT’S OK! Try on different ideal customers until you find one you LOVE!
- Think about who you have worked with so far.
- Do you enjoy them?
- What are their commonalities?
- What did you like about working with them?
- How and WHERE did you find them?
- Think about your own experiences. Can anything you’ve been through help you to help others (this is especially important for life coaches)
- Who do you naturally hang out with and attract? Is that your person?
- YOU have control and permission to change, adjust and alter this at any time! I like to recommend to try it for 6 months or so to give it a good amount of time to see how the marketing is working.
- Go with data over emotions… what do I mean by that? Look at your stats on your actual paying clients. Also look at the demographic numbers on your social media. Are these numbers in line with who you are marketing to? If yes, keep up the great work! If not, what are a few small things you can tweak to reach them?
- I know it’s the online age, but don’t be afraid to go local! Look at local support groups, churches, and book clubs. She’s out there!
A well-designed marketing strategy that is focused on your ideal customer will help you attract the right people, build awareness and trust, and ultimately drive more sales into your service-based business.
Make sure to subscribe to get the latest on all of my new blog posts. If you need help with finding your ideal customers to market your business? Let’s set up a call to chat, the first call is a simple 15-minute zoom designed to see if we are a good fit. It’s free, no pressure, no commitment.
