Who is your ideal client? That’s a very important question to answer. It can change the way you do business.
Every single business has a buyer persona. It’s the ideal customer who is interested in the types of products or services the business has to offer. The marketing campaign, office design, negotiation approach… everything will be designed and approach in a way that meets this person’s needs.
When you design this buyer persona, there’s one thing you should be specifically aimed towards: their problems. What’s keeping this person awake at night? More importantly: how can you solve these problems with your products or services?
It’s not easy to figure out what keeps your ideal clients up at night. You need a systematic approach. These tips will help you get to know your clients.
1. Focus on Their Basic Needs
Your ideal client may have various pain points that keep them awake at night. If we’re being less dramatic, we’d label them as needs instead of pain. Whatever industry your business belongs to, you can identify the needs of your buyer persona. If, for example, you’re a web developer, you know that your ideal client needs a good, frequently-updated website. Any malfunctions can cause embarrassment or even financial loss to their business. That’s something you want to fix.
You’ll get a lot of attention if you address these basic needs in the offer you make.
2. Focus on Their Lack of Expertise
You have expertise that your clients lack. That’s their weak point and it’s what’s preventing them from achieving good results.
If, for example, a small business owner wants to develop an effective social media campaign, they won’t know how to do it. Assuming this is a person who has no experience or education on proper marketing, they won’t know what tools to use and what approach to develop towards their audience.
When a marketing expert is making an offer, they can mention this lack of expertise. They will explain that the business is wasting a lot of money without achieving successful results. They will explain how they will approach the strategy from an expert’s point of view.
3. Go through Industry Publications
Chances are, the most popular bloggers from your industry already did the research for you. One of the main rules for blogging is: “discover the needs of your audience and offer solutions in your posts.” You just need to go through their blogs and see what pain points they address.
Olivia Pauls, blogger and career advisor at Careers Booster, explains: “Some blogs are extremely popular for a good reason: they provide solutions. You’ll find such blogs in each industry, be it fashion, makeup, programming, food, interior design… you name it. Bloggers don’t choose their topics randomly. They conduct research to find out what their target audience struggle with, so they can address those problems. By going through the popular blogs in your industry, you can find out what your target client needs. So you’ll offer adequate solutions.”
4. Check Out Quora
Quora is the place where general knowledge geeks get together to answer people’s questions. It’s the questions you want to be focused on.
Just choose your category on Quora. You may also use the search box to enter relevant keywords. You’ll find an array of questions that trigger discussions. These are the issues you want to address.
For example, let’s say you’re a web developer and you want to know what your clients are struggling with. If you type “website problems” in the search bar, these are some of the questions you’ll see:
- How do I check SEO website problem?
- How to solve a related-posts between websites problem
- How do I diagnose a website’s problem?
- I’m about to start an online business. What are the problems I should expect? Something like website problems, low conversion rate, cart abandonment etc?
These are real issues that your ideal client would face. The questions are already there; you just need to dig them out and address them through your offer.
5. Why Did Previous Clients Come to You?
Whenever you connect with a new client, you ask what they need, right? This is valuable information that tells you about the problems your target audience faces.
If you just started a business and you don’t have access to such information, you can simply ask. Why don’t you create an online survey asking for the most common issues of your target clients? You can distribute it across social media and you’ll get the answers you need.
Don’t worry; people will answer. They want you to do well, since they want to get good services. Ask about the struggles they face and the problems they encounter with other service providers from the industry.
What Will You Do With This Information?
It’s not just about revealing the issues your target clients have. It’s about offering relevant solutions. When you get this information, it’s important to take a look at your current services and your message to clients. Are you solving these needs? Are you addressing them when you speak to your clients?
How could you articulate your offer more effectively, so it will sound more convincing? When you focus on people’s problems and you prove that you can solve them, you’ll definitely have their attention.
