According to the Small Business Association, 95% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. One of the main reasons these businesses fail is they don’t know who their ideal client is, they lack a clearly defined target audience. If asked, many small business owners will say that their target audience is stay at home moms, college students, or middle-aged men.

That’s too general of an audience for the end result to be profitable.

You Need To Know Who You Are Speaking To

Some will even say that they don’t have a specific target audience their products or services are for everyone. That’s a mistake that is all too familiar to thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs.

When you try to target everyone, you’re speaking to no one. You’re simply wasting time and money and you’re not likely to see any return for all your hard work.

You cannot successfully market and grow your business if you don’t understand who your Perfect Client is.

If you don’t know exactly who you are talking to, how can you expect to reach them? 

Using generic terms and language in marketing material is not going to make your products and/or services stand out from the millions of others on the market.

Why You Should Know Your Ideal Client

Creating your ideal client avatar, or persona, will guarantee your marketing efforts are targeted and much more cost effective.

Profiling that customer who needs or desires your products and services the most will allow you to craft your marketing messages to stand out and appeal to him or her directly. Your Perfect Client will return repeatedly, spend more money, and recommend you to friends and family. This customer will be amazing to do business with and will generate a large percentage of your profit.

The aim is to try to project yourself, as best you can, into that person’s experience and to understand the context they are in when looking for a solution to their problem or desire. That is, in the context of your  business and the services and product that you offer.

The more thoroughly you know your audience, the better you will be able to serve them and market your solution.

Knowing your Perfect Client will impact just about every area of your marketing and sales process, including…

• What products your clients want
• The blog posts, videos, social media posts you should create to attract and convert your Perfect Client
• How you should describe your offers in all of your marketing pieces from emails, to ads and sales pages
• Which ad platforms you should be using and what targeting options you should use

Remember

• Define a client that YOU would like and enjoy doing business with.
• Specifically understand what it is that THEY want to achieve – the desired end result from their perspective.
• Your objective is to know your ideal customer so deeply, that you discover and can FEEL their pain or burning desire and EMPATHISE with them.
• What is the desperate emotional need they’re looking to satisfy?
• What is their WHY?

Once you have done ALL of this, you can:

• Know exactly what language to use
• What marketing medium is BEST for your Perfect Client (online or offline)
• How to bring them pleasure
• How to take away their ‘pain’
• How to influence them with stories
• WHAT to sell them!

Let’s Look At Some Figures…

In your market catchment:

• Just 3% are people are ready to buy your photography services right now
• 6 – 7% are open to buying your photography services
• 30% not thinking about buying what your photography
• 30% don’t think they are interested in your offerings
• 30% know they are not interested in your photography products and services.

Where Do Most Businesses Go Wrong?

They only target the 10% who want to but their product rather than trying to persuade the 90%!

Using a well written and detailed client avatar will help you develop copy and marketing materials that will help you persuade the 90%.

Now that you now know and understand why this is such a crucial and foundational step to the success of your business.