What Is An Ideal Client?
An ideal client isn’t just someone who would pay you a shit-ton of money for something you find easy, although wouldn’t that be ideal hahaha!!!
Identifying your ideal client (also known as an Ideal Client Avatar, ICA) in business terms means really getting to know your niche and serving them in the best way possible.
Some people recommend getting right down to exact specifics when identifying your ICA. Others suggest a more vague approach. We recommend doing both.
The problems when identifying your ideal client, especially when you’re a small business owner, are that you worry about getting too specific. We worry that by specifying the place that they shop in (for example), we’re cutting out huge swathes of the market and ignoring potential customers. FOMO, if you will.
Why Is It Important To Identify Your Ideal Client?
Identifying your ICA means that you can ‘speak their language’. The way you market your business to busy mums, for example would be totally different to how you market to male professionals. The way you speak to people aged 18-30, will be different from speaking to those who are 50+.
When you can identify some basic and specific demographics about your ideal client, you can solve their problems, and that’s what marketing is all about.
At the beginning, you may find it counter-intuitive to decide so specifically, potentially leaving customers out of your profiles. Don’t worry!!! You can have more than one ICA, and you will tailor your messages (and solutions) to each one.
Main reasons for identifying your ideal client:
1. You can go to where they are online (social media, forums etc)
2. You can solve their problems
3. You can provide value to them easily
4. Your messages will be very specific to them at that point in their lives
5. They will remember your messages, marketing and the value you have provided
How Do You Identify Your Ideal Client?
We’ve outlined a process below to help you identify your ICA. We’ve also created some Ideal Client Worksheets, complete with examples, over in our freebie vault, which you can find by clicking on this button:
Step 1
Recognise that your ICA will be somewhat fluid, especially as they go through different stages of their lives. Remember you can create as many ICAs as you wish, so d not worry about getting very specific.
Step 2
Work out their demographic information; age, location, time of life, main priorities and struggles. (A powerful tip here is to actually name your ICA!)
Step 3
Work out where they struggle, and how you solve that problem. For example, Digital Fixers shows small business owners how to do the tech stuff themselves. We know that our (current) ICA have a limited budget for their business, and in all likelihood that budget doesn’t stretch to fancy websites, email lists and paid advertising.
We solve that problem by providing free and modestly priced support, help and information.
Step 4
Create solutions to your ideal clients’ problems using your business. Resources, blog posts, posts on social media, a great way to do this is to build a community using social media groups. For example, our Facebook Group provides a great space for business owners to learn and ask questions as well as accessing us and our resources.
Serve your ideal client consistently and in a genuine manner.
Step 5
Repeat for the specific nuances of your ICA – for example some of our ideal clients are service-based, some are e-commerce business, yet more are makers. We serve them in different ways; some of our resources (website building etc) are general to all of them, but some (setting up an etsy shop, building a shopify website for example) will be more tailored to our different ICAs.
Want To Find Out More?
We believe that budget should not be a barrier to business growth.
We provide free and paid training, resources and workshops to help you at every stage of your business.
We have a thriving community and complete vault full of freebies and paid resources too.
Well, we are Nic and Lesley and we met in the summer of 2019. With almost a thousand years of digital and business experience (well it feels like it haha!), we joined forces to create a community and a bank of resources for businesses and entrepreneurs who, for one reason or another, want to do the tech stuff themselves.
We offer paid courses (coming in 2020!), free resources, a free support group, a paid monthly membership and more love than you could shake a stick at.
We believe that budget should not be a barrier to business online.
Check out our other small business blog posts here