A Clear Ideal Client Profile = A Better Bottom Line

The common problem holding back many businesses from greater success is that they are unable to clearly identify who their ideal prospects are. As a result, they waste a great deal of time and money on ineffective marketing.

Of course they know who their ‘best’ client is, whom they’ve worked with for the longest time. And they know who their ‘worst’ client is. What they are unable to describe is the criteria their clients share in common and the reasons why they became clients in the first place. That is the basis for Ideal Client Profiling. It’s worked for my business, and it can work for yours. It is at the core of what allows you to continually grow your business revenues year after year.

Admittedly, your existing clients are your best source of information and your top 20 clients, in particular, will often reflect the best target market for your business. That’s why our Ideal Client Profile focuses on your top 20 customers.

Ideal clients find value in your product or service, are profitable themselves, and more likely to refer you to other potential clients. Here’s how to get started on your Ideal Client Profiles.

6 Steps to Identifying and Targeting Your Ideal Client Profile

1. Create a list of your top 20 clients. If you have different lines of business or services, you may have different client profiles for each. For the purposes of this exercise, treat each as a distinct group.

2. Describe each client by identifying where they fit in these two categories:

• Demographics: Company size/type, geography/location, owner or employee, profession, education, client age, gender, membership in professional or special interest groups, marital status, etc.
• Psychographics: The wants, needs or pain points they had at the time they started doing business with you. In other words, what problem did your product or service solve for them.

3. Identify the source of your first contact with each client. This will include a general category as well as a specific example within that general category. One of my general categories is Networking with the specific networking group  as further definition.

4. Highlight or create a list of the criteria that show up most commonly on your list.

5. From this information, create one or more ideal client profiles, using a combination of demographic and psychographic descriptors.

6. Create a list of the top sources of your top clients. This information will show you where to focus your marketing time and money in order to drive a steady stream of great clients to your door.

One of my coaching tools is designed to make it easier to describe your ideal client when generating quality referrals for your business. Click here to request a free copy of the Magic Phrase Worksheet™. Simply enter the words ‘Magic Phrase Worksheet’ in the subject line and I’ll get that out to you right away.

To your business health!

Mary Lou