Understanding who is most likely to buy from you is essential in establishing your brand, creating an effective marketing strategy, and building a successful business. Building out an ideal client profile of your best customers is the best way to make your business attractive to more people just like them. Your ideal customer is essential for branding and marketing your business.

How to Research Your Ideal Client

Identifying your ideal client is key to the success of your company. There are many pieces of information that you can research to identify these factors. Here are five ways to do research.

1. Current Customers – Your current customers are the best source of valid data on the characteristics of your ideal clients.
2. Social Media – If you already have a social media following, you can gather details about your customers there.
3. Google Analytics – Analytics contains a wealth of information about website visitors, leading you to understand your ideal clients better.
4. Competitor Research – Competitor information is a great place to strengthen the understanding of the persona of your ideal client.
5. Industry Data – If your product or service is focused on a specific industry or niche, you may find data from associations or industry groups that will help you understand your likely customers.

Finding Your Ideal Client’s Pains and Gains

Depending on the type of business, your clients may be more focused on alleviating pain or motivated by their gain aspirations. Part of human nature is our drive to move away from anything painful. These pains may be physical but are more likely to be emotional pains such as irritations, frustrations, or fears. On the opposite side, some people buy a product or service because they want to feel something positive. They have aspirations, desires, or needs. As you promote your product or service, remember to describe the emotional pains and gains more than just the features.

Should You Have a Broad or Focused Customer Profile?

As contradictory as it seems, you are more likely to successfully attract customers when you develop a clear and specific profile of your best customers and then find more people who are similar.

3 Reasons to focus your ideal customer profile

1. You’ll create messaging that better connects with the pains and gains.
2. You can choose images that reflect your customer.
3. You’ll know where to find them.

As your business grows, you’ll get more insights into those customers who are most likely to buy from you and continue to refine the demographic of psychographic details that connect them.

How Many Ideal Client Profiles Should You Have?

If you have more than one ideal client profile, make sure that any decisions you make about your branding, such as your visual style or key messaging, are appealing to all groups. If possible, try to hone in on your one, most ideal customer. Imagine someone calling you up, going to your website, or entering your establishment. Once you have a clear picture of your ideal client profile, you want to find shops (or other distributors) with similar customer profiles. You can then convince the store owner that your product will be attractive to the shoppers at their store.

Avatars, Personas, and Ideal Clients: What’s the difference?

Three standard industry terms you may have heard are ideal clients, buyer personas, and customer avatars. All three terms are used to answer the same question; Who is my perfect customer?

• Ideal client – Your perfect client will be a frequent purchaser of your offerings and will be a great source of word-of-mouth marketing as they recommend your business to their family and friends. Since these people are so crucial to your business success, it is essential to understand your ideal client as best you can.

• Avatar – You may want to create a name for your ideal client, which can be your customer avatar. For example, you might say: “Molly Millennial typically is 25-35 years old woman who lives in a large urban city, uses public transportation, works at a well-paid corporate job, and listens to 5 or more audiobooks every year.

• Persona – A good buyer persona is created by studying customer data and interviewing customers directly. This gives you great insights into what your buyers think about and can help you develop marketing messages that capture the real pain point you are trying to solve for your customers.

To Improve Your Brand, Answer These 5 Unusual Questions About Your Ideal Client

Five thought-provoking questions to think beyond the demographics and psychographics of your ideal customers. These questions will help you think a little differently about the persona of your ideal customer or client.

1. What are your customers using now as an alternative to your product or service?

2. What are the benefits of the benefits of using your product or service?

3. When and where do prospects learn about your product or service?

4. What are some of their favorite brands?

5. Who would YOU like to work with?

It’s often when you think beyond the standard demographic or psychographic buckets that you start to truly understand how you can build a memorable brand that attracts your best prospects.

Start Building Your Brand

Branding Compass can help you pull all these insights together into a complete and highly visual profile that’s easy to share with others. Start your Branding Compass workbook and let us help you build an ideal customer profile.