The other day, I shared with you the case of an American agency of 2 people, which had grown a lot without the need to cold call any customers. Through a 4-step process, the ideal customers found the agency and the agency focused on them, forgetting about all those other customers that did not fit the profile of the ideal customer for which they were searching. For this agency, defining the ideal customer was critical because, based on this ideal, they could determine where to find them, how to attract them, and how to identify them once they filled in a short questionnaire.
In this article, I would like to share with you how you can define your ideal customer. Defining an ideal customer is important, no matter what service you sell or what strategy you follow to acquire customers. This will help you understand where to find them and what to tell your customers.
To define the ideal customer, think about the type of customer you can serve the best, can bring more value to, and that will be the easiest to convince.
If your agency has been in the market for some time, this exercise should be easy. Think about the customers you already have and the ones you have had in the past. Ask yourself:
- Who are the customers you feel the best working with?
- What customers can you help the most?
- How can you help them?
- What common characteristics do they have?
If you are an agency that is just starting out and you do not have any previous experience, this will be more difficult, but think about the type of customer that you would like to have.
Put a face on your customer. If you are thinking about specific customers, write down their names and the reasons why you feel good working with them. If you are thinking of a hypothetical customer, think about how you would like them to be. Reviewing this will help you to define them so you know where to find them and what to tell them.
The following questions will help you define this ideal customer:
- Are they a large, medium or small company?
- Are they an international, national, or local company?
- Are they located in your city or could they be many kilometers away?
- Are they from a specific industry?
- Do they have responsibility for marketing or communications in the company?
- Who would you deal with?
If you already have experience with this type of customer, think
- What do they value about your agency?
- Why have they chosen your agency over others?
If you do not know the answer to these questions, you should ask some of your customers what they value the most about your agency, why they chose you, and why they continue to work with you over other agencies that have surely contacted them. This information will help you understand your customers better, the value you bring to them, and what you could tell potential customers so they can better relate to your company.
If you currently do not have any customers, think about what you would like them to say about your agency.
Write down those aspects you consider important and create an image of the ideal customer.
Once you have put a face on your ideal customer, think about the person at that company who will be deciding if they are going to hire your agency or not. If it is going to be different people, think about the profile of each one, so that you know what you should tell each one. If these people have different positions, the focus should be different.
You may be thinking that every person is different and that this depends on each person. And you are right, but it is also true that it is not the same to deal with a General Manager of a small company than it is to deal with the Marketing Manager of a medium-sized or a multinational company. If the same person worked in these three different positions, he would behave differently and would be worried about different matters. This is what you should concentrate on to define the profile of the person that will evaluate and make the decision about your agency’s proposal.
The following questions will help you define this person
This person or people…
- Is she an expert in your field?
- Does she understand the benefits that she will get by hiring an agency like yours?
- What is she most interested in?
- Is she interested in long-term or short-term results?
- What issue does not let her sleep at night?
- What problems does she have that your agency could help her solve?
- Does she prefer an agency that provides her with different services or a specialized agency, the best in that one service?
- Is she going to get involved in the day to day business or does she prefer not to be directly involved?
- How often is she going to want to hear from you?
- How can you communicate to her the benefits that you bring to her?
- What does her average day look like?
- Does she do a lot of things?
- How important is the service you provide to her day to day?
- On which aspects will she base her decision to hire or not hire your agency?
From all these, the most important aspect is:
What is the most important problem she has that you could help her resolve?
I will get into more details on this soon.
Photo by Tri Nguyen
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