Have you ever encountered an advertisement that made you feel that they literally read your mind? That they understood exactly what you were feeling, needing or even frustrated about? That may feel scary, but what is really happening is that the brand truly understood what their ideal client needed. They took the time to listen, understand and empathize with YOU.
Let’s be honest, it feels great when someone ‘gets’ you! We’ve all been someone’s ideal client. Whether with a credit card company, a cell or cable service, in a bank or at a retail store, the ones who get it right make their products and services feel like a fit just for you… so much so, it doesn’t feel like marketing. It’s more like it speaks to you!
How can you apply this to your own customers — or the ones you want to be your clients?
Define your ideal client using empathy mapping
1. Defining Your Ideal Client
The more you invest in defining your ideal client — getting to know who you love doing business with — the easier it becomes to market to them in ways that make them reach back.
Much like you do with any important relationship in your life, learn the traits that make them special: their favorite music and food, their digital habits, any quirks, what makes them happy or sad.
Makes sense… but you may be asking, “Just how do I do that, when I can’t ask them these questions?”
2. Focus on Real Human Beings
As a brand, marketer or social media manager, if you sell to the world, you sell to no one. Never forget that there’s a real person behind the client profile and analytics stats. How do you identify the ideal client you want to work with and learn their “language,” how and where they network, their preferred consumer behaviors?
3. 3 Ways to Gain Insight Into Your Ideal Client:
- Ask your favorite clients. We think we have to scope the internet to find insight, but you may have the best resource already — your current clients! If you are trying to relay a specific marketing message around your brand, product or service, ask them questions related to the emotions tied to them. Ask them why they felt frustrated about a particular need, why they reached out to you, and how they felt after working with you to solve that pain point. If you want more clients like them, gaining more insight from them is gold.
- Google! It’s your friend. You gain incredible insight when you do the right search. Start with a list of keywords or phrases that relate to your business. See what articles you can find, or better yet, locate a person sharing their frustrations about an experience they had. This one takes time, but it’s worth a shot in return for a better understanding of your ideal client.
- Do a survey. Surveys are an excellent way to get collective feedback in one place. Frame your questions around some basic pain points you already know people experience, and expand on that. Then, make sure you send it to the right people to take it. Offering some sort of compensation for their time will help you get more participants.
Once you have all this data, how do you organize it?
4. The Empathy Mapping Workbook
We at Nicte Creative Design have created a tried and true process to help you identify and understand your ideal client so you can market content that resonates with them: The Empathy Mapping Workbook.
Empathy Mapping is a visual tool that helps you gain deeper insight into the behaviors, attitudes, actions, and pains of your ideal clients. This includes sensory elements like sight and sound stimulus.
5. Ideal Customer Diagrams
Included in the workbook, Ideal Customer Diagrams help you create your message based on what you learned. Instead of using words and visuals you THINK will work, you will now KNOW how to tailor your message to fit your ideal client’s needs. A Customer-focused strategy used by brands to develop their products, services, and campaigns really make a measurable difference.
An important bonus of this process — you’ll be able to recognize red flag customers… the ones you will do well to see coming and sidestep. Brands are so focused on knowing their ideal client, that knowing the clients we DON’T want to work with is often overlooked.
Defining your ideal client is like a superpower! Learning to employ it will bring untold value to you. The process takes a little investment of time and thought but it will result in an unmistakable difference in your branding and marketing efforts!
Download Define Your Ideal Client Using Empathy Mapping and you’ll receive my 12-page digital book with two editable worksheets, and instant access to two video exercises! A wealth of information for only $19.
For a deeper dive, you can take my course, Define Your Creative Edge to Promote Your Work, on Linked In Learning.
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