With all the marketing channels and resources available today, you would think it’d be easy to attract your ideal customer or client. But many business owners feel overwhelmed and disorganized in their marketing efforts.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself “I’m posting on social media. I have a nice website. Why aren’t I attracting the right kind of client?” it’s likely you don’t have a set strategy in place.
Attracting your ideal customer or client is not about finding a social media shortcut or running a pricey ad campaign. It’s about using a deep knowledge of your client to craft offerings that will appeal to them and messaging that will resonate.
This blog post walks you through how to attract your ideal customer or client. For more help, check out our wholehearted strategy session or monthly marketing services.
Know your ideal customer
It’s not enough to have a vague idea of who you serve. You need to be deeply in touch with your ideal client, the challenges they face, and what they desire. Only then can you craft the offerings, messaging, and content that pulls them in.
Rather than setting a broad description of your target market, create a more defined client persona.
- A yoga studio could serve “35-year-old moms who work remotely with two kids under 12” rather than “busy women.”
- A local conservation group could target “college students who use social media to advocate for environmental causes” instead of “Gen Z.”
You might be worried that narrowing your focus will minimize other opportunities. It typically doesn’t play out this way. Pinpointing your ideal customer will sharpen up your messaging and increase its effectiveness. Because the messaging is so effective, it will likely resonate with others who are similar to your ideal client.
How can you get to know your ideal customer or client? Research, research, research. That can come in the form of external market research or one-on-one conversations with members of your target audience. Ideally, you’ll use a blend of both.
Spending a few hours online scrolling through relevant online groups, forums, hashtags, and market research reports can go a long way. Sparking up meaningful conversations with the kind of people you’re looking to serve will reveal insights and ideas that have a better chance of resonating with your target audience.
Show that you can solve their problem
Every client or customer has a problem they are looking to solve. Now that you’re clear on your ideal customer, you can identify their core challenges and become a trusted ally in solving (or at least simplifying) them.
Problems come in many formats. They can be external– such as a working mom who has too many items on their to-do list. Or internal– such as feeling guilty about not spending enough time with their family. They can even be larger societal problems, like an employer who doesn’t provide flexibility for parents.
The more of your ideal clients’ problems you can solve, the more clients you are going to attract (and retain).
Using the above example, the working mom with two kids might struggle with the external problem of not having enough time for herself. She might struggle internally with the stress and short temper that a lack of self-care can fuel.
Knowing this, a yoga studio might schedule their classes to occur right after moms drop their kids off at school. They could share content around stress reduction and entertaining, relatable videos on social media. They might even offer additional resources, such as teaming up with a daycare for discounted childcare while they’re in class in order to attract their ideal client.
At the end of the day, people are looking to solve their problems. If you show that you understand and can help solve your client’s problems, you become indispensable in the eye of your client.
Go looking for them
Marketing– and advertising for that matter– have traditionally felt a bit passive. Companies put out ads or content and expect customers to come rolling in. This may have been sufficient in a pre-digital age, when the competition wasn’t nearly as fierce. These days, it helps to supplement your marketing efforts with actions that are a little more proactive.
Once you know who your ideal clients are, you can go looking for them. This might be in a real-life kind of way, such as attending events they’re likely to attend. It can also be online. You can join relevant Facebook groups or follow certain hashtags and engage on your ideal clients’ posts with helpful or supportive comments.
The key to doing this without being creepy or spammy is to be genuine and, ideally, helpful. If you’re chatting with a woman at a kombucha tasting, it will feel natural to mention you own a yoga studio. If you follow up with a prospect you met at an industry event with resources relevant to your conversation, that will feel less salesy and more genuine than a simple sales call.
You can even go looking for your ideal clients without leaving the house. Find them by searching and engaging with relevant groups, forums, and even hashtags. Again, the key here is to be helpful and genuine. Seek to add value in your interactions and eventually, it will pay off.
If you really want to attract your ideal clients, there is nothing quite like getting out and looking for them. You can do this online and offline, as long as you are being helpful and authentic.
Create content with them in mind
No one logs onto Facebook or Instagram because they want to see advertisements. We open these apps because we’re hungry for entertainment, education, or even just distraction. Create content that aims to educate or entertain your ideal client, and let the content do the attracting for you.
That doesn’t mean you can never create content with a more direct sales goal. An effective content strategy will have a healthy blend of educational/entertaining content, and content designed to drive more immediate results for your business.
Content marketing plays a key role in lead generation here at Wholeheart Agency. We rarely put out ads for our marketing, branding, or web design services. Who wants to see that? Instead, we put out in-depth and high-value content written with our ideal client types in mind. Our blog posts account for some of the most-visited pages on our website, and often come up in discovery calls with new clients.
Getting clear on your ideal client is critical to this stage. If you’re trying to serve anyone and everyone, your content will be all over the place. If you create content with one person in mind, it has a better chance of attracting your ideal customer or client.
Promote that content to them
Digital advertising is an incredible resource, and still relatively new to the advertising landscape. You can reach a pretty obscene number of people by throwing $20 at a Facebook post. Especially when compared to traditional advertising like TV commercials and print ads!
The problem is, people don’t like seeing ads. There is even a phenomenon known as ad blindness; we’ve trained ourselves to overlook the ads on a webpage. But traditional ads are not the only thing that you can promote online.
If you take our advice above, you may start writing blog posts or creating downloadable resources to attract your ideal client. You can then pay to promote that content to people within your target market. Most people are more likely to click on an article that appears in their newsfeed than a blatant advertisement.
There’s an important caveat here. In order for this to work and be cost-effective, you need to set specific targeting parameters for your ad campaigns. Social media companies want you to cast a wide net– the default age settings on Facebook ads is 18-65+. Few ads are of equal interest to an 18-year old and their 65-year-old grandparent!
Review best practices for detailed targeting and play around with your targeting parameters. You can target, for example, “women between 28 and 39 who like yoga and live in Milwaukee” or “male business owners between the ages of 50-60 who follow the World Wildlife Fund.” Use paid advertising and strict targeting parameters to attract your ideal client or customer without overspending on ads.
Be authentic
People can smell sleaze and spam from a mile away. Strive to be authentic in your marketing and outreach efforts, both online and in person.
What does it mean to be authentic in your marketing efforts? You can start by following the suggestions in this blog post. Aim to educate, entertain, or inspire through your marketing efforts. Join local events or online groups and strive to be helpful and build relationships with your ideal clients and customers. Leave comments on social media posts that provide appreciation or support.
Being authentic doesn’t mean you can’t possibly stand to benefit from the interaction. It’s the awareness that showing up consistently, being a good person, and helping others will reap dividends from your business. Whether you’re crafting a social media post or starting a conversation online or off, do it from a place of positive intention. Your energy will reflect that, and attract your ideal client.
How to attract your ideal customer or client
You can’t attract your ideal customer or client with a one-off campaign or social media post. You need to build a cohesive marketing strategy and put in the work to attract your ideal client or customer. The more expensive or exclusive your offering is, the more effort you’ll need to put in to attract your ideal client.
If you would like help attracting your ideal customer or client, check out our monthly marketing services or book a wholehearted strategy session. We’re here to help you do well in business, so that you may do good in the world.