Step 8 to Build a Better Business – Go on a Blind Date… With Your Ideal Customer

The easiest way to get a feel for who your ideal customer is, is to look at who your current and past customers have been. From your Customer Management System, you may have some basic customer information available, like: address, age, gender, marital status, etc.

Take at look at the data you have available and see if there is a pattern or commonality among the people who buy from you. If you find that the people you are attracting as customers are not the people you’re intending to attract, it’s probably a sign that you should change where and how you’re marketing. You know, sort of like dating. If you’re in a business where it wouldn’t be normal to capture that type of customer information, or if you don’t have that info available, I suggest the following exercise.

Imagine for a moment that your ideal customer walked through the front door of your business. What would that person look like? Male? Female? Teen? Middle-aged?

Now imagine you and this ideal customer sat down for a casual getting-to-know-you chat, as if you were on a blind date. What kind of work does this person do? What kind of car do they drive? What kinds of things would this person be most interested in talking about with you? What kind of hobbies or interests do they have? Where do spend most of their time? Are they married? Single? Parents? A pet owner? A college graduate?

The greater your understanding of your ideal customer and their particular story, the better your ability to market to and service them will be. If you don’t know who your ideal customer is, they don’t know who they are either.

What I mean is that if the people who are buying from you don’t know that they are the ones you’re intentionally trying to provide benefit to, they won’t feel special. If your business is just after any and everybody, that’s what your customers will feel like, and they won’t have any reason not to go to a competitor. If they feel like your business is the place that truly ’gets’ them, the underwater basket weaving enthusiast in their late 30s, then chances are they’re going to keep coming back to you.