Who Is Your Dream Client?
Every business online or offline usually has one big ‘problem’… finding more customers.
“I have a great product, just nobody wants to buy it.”
“I have an valuable service, just nobody is hiring me!”
Frustrating right? I’ve been there. The key is online marketing is working smarter, not harder.
The #1 question you have to ask yourself is to get out of this rut is, who do I actually want to work with or who needs my product? Trust me, you won’t be leaving opportunity on the table narrowing down your “Dream Client”. We’ve found the more niche clear you get, the more customers you’ll get and the more your business will grow. Also, the more we actually zero in on who your dream client is, the easier it will be to find them and get in front of them.
Many people start with the creation of their product or service, thinking about who they want as clients and customers secondarily. You might have an existing local business right now or you’re in the process of finding how to build a business online. Maybe you have a weight loss app, a software product, an authority site, or something else going on.
To make your business a success or create explosive growth, you have to learn WHO it’s for more than ever before.
As Russell Brunson, the author of DotComSecrets says,
“You’ll probably spend more time with these people than your own friends and family. You choose your significant other carefully, so why wouldn’t you take the same time and care in deciding who your dream client or customer will be? If you’re just getting started, this may not seem important. But I promise you that if you don’t consciously choose your dream client, one day you will wake up like I did, working with people who exhaust you and wishing that someone could fire you from the business you created.”
Those words pack a punch, right? But if you want to execute an online marketing strategy that’s PROFITABLE, build the business you LOVE, you’re going to need to know exactly who your ideal customer is.
After all, there is a very low chance of converting someone to buy your product or service, if you don’t know who you’re going after.
Why Know Your Dream Client and Not Just Look at Data?
The numbers are valuable when getting to know your audience as a whole, but forming a specific dream client helps to keep the stats from becoming stale and stagnant. A dream client can be imagined, you can really paint the real-life scenario and what will get them to take action with you or not.
Another danger with simply relying only on stats for your target audience is that you can be tempted to have too broad of an audience, especially online. Unless you’re Walmart, Amazon, or some other huge retailer with a nearly unlimited budget to advertising and marketing, you need to niche down or you are going to be fighting an uphill battle that’s near impossible to win this day and age. How many failed companies have “everybody” as their target audience? More than we can count. When you target everyone, you attract no-one (especially with a limited budget for paid advertising).
Russell Brunson, a legend in the Online Marketing world says in his book Expert Secrets:
“My next question for you is what submarket does your area of expertise fit right now? Some of you may think that you’ve found your answer. You’re a real estate expert, or a dating or weight loss coach. But the money is NOT in the submarket. The riches are in the niches. And those are one step beyond the submarket…”
Enter the world of picking your Dream Client aka Customer Avatar…
The research and information compiled in this first step can potentially make or break your efforts to build a profitable business or cause growth. It’s easy to get caught up in fun of sales, creating content, websites, creating products, and futuristic view of the results and fulfillment that are to come. The reason we do any of that is to provide more value and service to our CUSTOMER.
Let’s get into it. Here are the questions I’d like you to write down and answer as specifically as possible:
- What are their goals, dreams, and desires?
- Where do they spend their free time?
- What gets them out of bed in the morning?
- What are their traits (successful, driven, relentless, etc.)?
- What are their values and morals?
- What are their beliefs?
- What problems do they have in life or business?
- What have they already accomplished in their life?
- What is the demographics and status of your ideal customer (age, gender, location, level of education, annual income, occupation)?
When you have those first set of a dream client questions answered, you should now have a point of reference to answer the next level of questions that will reveal the online marketing game plan:
- Where does my audience hang out online?
- Tip: Here is how to target your ads.
- What questions do they want answers for?
- Tip: Here is powerful ad copy.
- What problem do they want solving?
- Tip: Here is the product to create for them or more ad copy.
- What are other products or services have they used in the past?
- Tip: Here is how you know how to design and position your product to be different (and similar at times) to what they’ve experienced.
- What types content does my dream client respond to the most?
- Tip: Here is how to capture their attention and build rapport with content marketing & the lead magnets to build.
A Weak Example
My dream customer uses our product to lose weight. They want to be better parents, so our app is useful for helping them lose weight and feel healthier.
This example sounds too impersonal. We’re not talking about a mission statement here. We want the actual story of a specific person, we want to attract.
A Better Example
Having a specific dream client starts with providing a name. I even recommend going as far as a picture to go along with the avatar. When I do this process I even go to Google and search the name I made up and use that as my avatar picture.
Here is a more detailed example of an avatar that might want our example woman weight loss membership site:
Sue is a 48 year old Teacher who lives in Boulder, Colorado. She makes about 50,000 a year. Her time is swallowed up by work, running errands, and taking care of her kids. The reason she’s started to look into losing weight is because she used to be an athlete and wants her confidence back. She is also going to Cancun for summer break and she wants to look great on vacation. She not only wants to look good on her vacation, but she wants this to be a lifestyle change, something she can stick with long term. She’s not sure she can balance working out, eating right, and having a packed schedule and she’s really confused with all the information out there. She’s tried out a personal trainer before and the traditional meal prepping via their instruction and couldn’t stick to it. One of her big concerns is having to track all the numbers in foods and eat 6 different meals a day to be able to lose weight like everyone’s has told her she has to do, including her past personal trainer. She’s tried low-calorie and low-carb diets in the past that only resulted in gaining more weight back in the long term. Due to Sue’s responsibilites and limited time, so she needs a food and an at home workout plan that will guide her daily/weekly. Sue also wishes there was a program out there that had a community with similar goals, where she wouldn’t feel so alone and be held accountable.
Sue is very active on Facebook and Pintrist after about 7pm at night after work and running errands. She likes different health pages on Facebook and Pintrist. She loves healthy recipes and making food “fun”.
We create a lead magnet, a healthy, unique recipe cheatsheet and promote it via a targeted Facebook ad to it shows up in Sue’s newsfeed. We believe Sue will take our free cheatsheet in exchange for her email address, because she really loves the healthy recipies. Since she’s on our email list now and we send her daily emails (that are preplanned and automated to everyone that joins the email list with an autoresponder). She learns that all she’s been told about fat loss isn’t the only way it has to be done by relating to our story and testimonials. She applies some of the methods we have sent and gets value from everything we’ve first included. Throughout these emails, we asnwered many of the questions she’s had and offered solutions to her problems.
As she learns about our at weight loss membership site through emails, Sue is starting to think that this could be the tool that helps her lose the body weight for good. Each email we keep sending Sue the opportunity to become a part of the community and having a call to action to visit our sales funnel page. On the fourth email she decides to check out our sales page. She’s learns that our weight loss membership site includes at home-workouts, what to eat when eating out, weekly updated grocery list, a weekly updated easy to follow food plan and a supportive Facebook group. At this point, Sue really trusts us because you’ve given her so much value and built rapport with her. She decides to buy into our weight losss membership site that morning!
- Where does Sue hang out online?
- Facebook and Pinterest after 7pm.
- Health-based pages (Tip: Plently of ways to target this niche with Facebook Ads)
- What questions does Sue want answers for?
- Do I have to eat 6 meals a day to lose weight?
- What workouts can I do at home?
- What are filling, healthy foods?
- What are yummy healthy, low-calorie recipes?
- What can I eat that’s healthy when I’m at (restaurant name)?
- What are solutions to Sue’s problems?
- To gain her confidence back through her health.
- Weight loss doesn’t have to be stressful and hard.
- Effective at home workouts.
- Updated grocery list for the week.
- Updated weekly, daily meals.
- Eating out at a restaurant, healthy picks.
- She doesn’t have to starve to lose weight.
- What are other products or services has Sue tried out before?
- Personal trainer.
- A traditional gym.
- Meal prepping.
- Low-calorie diets.
- Low-card diets.
- What type of content does my dream client respond to the most?
- Free content that gives value before she buys.
- Simple easy to read and apply content.
- Instructional content.
Can I Have More Than One Dream Client?
Yes, that’s fine! Most businesses will have more than one dream client. The problem comes when you have too many. If you have 20 or 30 dream customers, then you’ll really have a hard time focusing your market efforts. Focus on one dream client, then expand as you get familiar with this concept.
I’ve found that your efforts might be better spent going deeper into one target markets then spreading a wider net. Again, your effort is wasted when you spread a wide net trying to attract everyone online.
Now that you have a well-defined dream client you’ve taken the first important step to executing an online marketing strategy that’s PROFITABLE for your business.