If I had a dollar for every time a consultant said: “Describe your ideal customer to me”, I’d certainly be a rich man. Knowing your target audience, ‘they’ say, is one of the most important aspects to your marketing (don’t ask me who ‘they’ are, but they definitely pop up a lot).
And then ‘they’ would sprout things like:
- Demographics: Income, location, age etc
- Interests: Hobbies, likes, dislikes
- Where/Journey: Blogs, magazines, podcasts etc
Whilst some of the above are certainly characteristics of who your ideal customer is, they actually don’t help you a hell of a lot with the screening process of what sort of customer would be a good fit for your business.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
Yes, that’s right, just because you can take on a customer, it certainly doesn’t mean you should take on a customer. So how do you know?
After 17 years in business I wanted to share my latest epiphany as to what my ideal customer is and how I can screen them to make sure I only work with those I should, rather than those I will later regret.
My ‘Aha’ moment was when I was having a coaching session with Emily Diamon (thanks Emily you’ve been great) and she goes, what do all these customers (the good ones who we worked well with, and were getting great results for) have in common?
After a few minutes of sole searching I replied:
