Wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone who came to your website, or stepped into your shop, fit your ideal customer profile? They spent money on your highest margin products, came back every week, and told all their friends about you.
It may sound simple, but if you want to attract the ideal customer you need to have a clear idea of who they are! This Local Business Step will help you come up with a concise ideal customer profile by answering a few questions.
How to create your ideal customer profile?
The easiest way to complete this step is to identify one ideal customer and answer the questions based on that one person. It is important to only base it on one person and don’t let yourself fall into the trap of giving a range based on a number of people. If you have different types of customers then complete these questions for each type – but limit yourself to no more than 3 as this is an exercise about focusing!
If you are just starting out and don’t yet have a perfect customer then you will need to make one up but try and keep it as real as possible and validate and modify your Ideal Customer Profile as you start to meet your customers.
Business to Consumer Questions
Question 1 – How often would your perfect customer buy from you and what would they buy?
Question 2 – How old is your perfect customer?
Question 3 – Would they tell their friends about you and how many new customers would you hope to make from their referral?
Question 4 – How did they find out about you?
Question 5 – What did your customer search for on the web to find your service?
Question 6 – Where do they live and work?
Business to Business Questions
Question 1 – How often would your perfect customer buy from you and what would they buy?
Question 2 – How senior is the person in their company?
Question 3 – Would they tell their colleagues about you and how many new customers would you hope to make from their referral?
Question 4 – How did they find out about you?
Question 5 – What did your customer search for on the web to find your service?
Question 6 – Where do they work?
An example Ideal customer profile for our business coaching.
Sarah brought a £2,000 yearly subscription for our services and has renewed it every year for 5 years. She is very good at completing actions that come out of our discussions and challenge anything she is not happy with. Sarah is the company founder and owner.
She found out about us via a recommendation from someone we already work with and made the decision to contact us after reading some of our Small Step Blog Posts and an article in a local business journal.
She has recommended us to 3 other companies, 1 of which has become a customer.
Her company is 12 miles from our office making face to face visits easy.
An example Ideal customer profile for a fictitious Pet shop.
Tracey has 3 dogs and two small children (Tracey is probably in her mid 30’s). She came into the shop every couple of weeks to buy special dog food. The children love to look at the rabbits and other animals when they come and they often buy something else while they are here. Recently she brought a rabbit and hutch for her daughter’s birthday.
She lives 1 mile away and usually walks to the shop. She moved to the area 3 years ago and found out about us by searching “where to buy dog food” on google. She says she came to us first as we had lots of positive google reviews and it was easy to get to us.
She gave us a 5 star review on google and followed us on Instagram and Facebook. She regularly shares and likes our posts.
She has a social circle of dog walkers and a number of them have purchased dog equipment from us as a result of her positive comments.
Review your Ideal Customer Profile
Now that you have your Ideal Customer Profile there are several things you should review.
- How big is your Ideal Marketplace? Not every customer will be an ideal customer, but you will need a number of them to make your business viable and if you have truly defined a unique individual then it may be best to reposition your business to widen your Ideal Customer Profile. If you do this then be careful not to just add a set of OR requirements in as you will fall into the trap of defining a number of profiles.
- Does your website talk to your ideal customer or does it try to talk to everyone? If it talks to everyone there is a chance that when your ideal customer turns up they may not realize you are the ideal business!
- Does your physical marketing target your ideal customer? For example; the pet shop is looking to attract local dog owners who want to bring their children to their shop so their marketing flyers highlight how family-friendly it is.
- Does your online marketing segment your audience enough? This is a whole new area we will cover in another Local Business Step but if you are using Paid for Advertising you need to make sure you are spending money to attract your ideal customer.
