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THIS WEEK
Attracting Your Ideal Customer
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
| Attracting Your Ideal Customer |
Most businesses pursue customers in the same way that a lion hunts prey. They watch and when any likely prospect wanders past they leap on them. Sometimes they bring them down, but a lot of time the potential prey gets away.
In the past this was seen as the only way to get new customers, to keep hunting until you were lucky. It was very labour intensive and required self confidence of steel to cope with the thousands of knock backs.
These days the smart businesses are moving to attraction based
marketing, where rather than pursuing the customer, they create a great offering and attract qualified customers to them with no hunting involved. There is no hard selling, just showing a person who is interested what makes your product or service so great and allowing them to make up their own minds.
Sounds great – but how do you go about attracting your ideal customer?
For clues in what works in attracting customers, businesses can borrow a lot of lessons from the world of internet dating. In internet dating, individuals put up profiles about themselves on the dating website.
 Interested people visit the site and contact the person. A conversation then ensues and potentially moves into a non-cyber date. If those dates go well, then a positive outcome results.
On internet dating websites, some people seem to get lots of people contacting them and others languish quietly on the cyber-shelf. So what is the difference?
If you really want to attract your ideal customer then stage 1 starts with you. You first need to work out who you are, what makes you special and unique and why anyone would be interested in you in the first place. You need to know what you are offering and why it is brilliant.
This is much easier said than done (both on internet dating and in business). There are hundreds of businesses on the market, so you need to be totally clear on the difference you make to a customer (and if you are not making a difference, you shouldn't be in business).
Unless you are clear on what you can offer the customer, either they will keep on walking by or you will attract the wrong sort of customers as you have sent out the wrong messages. If people can't work out in a split second what makes you different, then they will move on. If you send out a message such as we're cheap, then you will attract cheap customers.
In terms of the message, you need to be clear not just on the tangible things (we sell flowers), but the intangibles or how you make the customer feel (through flowers, we help our customers create memorable moments in their lives). Finally, you need to be consistent in your messages and be congruent in everything you say and do with your customers.
Only once you are clear on who you are and what you do, can you move onto becoming clear about your ideal customer.
In internet dating people specify the exact sort of person they are looking to meet, right down to eye shade and preference for pets. In business you need to get to the same level of detail in working out what your ideal customer thinks and looks like.
The way to do this is to think of your favourite 5 customers or clients. Bring them to your mind and jot down the qualities about them that makes them superb. It may be that they pay on time, give you interesting work, appreciate what you do or something else. Whatever the qualities, jot them down. You will usually find a number of common areas and themes start to emerge. Write all of these themes and commonalities down in a list, headed with "My ideal customer ..."
What do customers look at on internet dating sites? The first things most people look at are the photos. They look to see if the person is warm and approachable, and the photo reflects the personality of the person (you would be surprised at the number of fuzzy, non-smiling, dreadful photos people put up on dating sites!) If the photo is hidden, many people think they have something to hide and will not approach the person.
Next they read the words on the profile, checking if the personally meet the specified requirements, as well as if they are interested in what the person has to say. If they are interested they have a very clear action they can take in terms of how to contact the person.
What does this mean for business? Once you have identified your ideal customer, then you need to make sure you communicate what your ideal customer is to the world. Putting it simply you need to say "If you are looking for ABC service by a company who delivers in ABC way, and you are an ABC ideal customer then contact us".
How you do that is by first reviewing all of the words and images in your website and marketing material, asking the question "would my ideal client be attracted to work with me based on this wording and these pictures".
If not, then contact your marketing and copywriting people and share your list with them so they can help you frame your words and images on your website and marketing material to specifically target the sorts of customers you want to attract.
You also need to check to make sure you have a very clear and unambiguous way that people can contact you and you have discussed the list with your employees, so they understand what makes an "A class" client.
Going back to internet dating, once a person receives a contact, then generally they take the following actions. They look at the other persons profile to see if it is a match and if they like the look of the person, before replying and initiating further discussion.
In terms of business you should follow the same process. Look at the customers who approach you and determine if they fit your profile of an ideal client. If not, you have some choices to make about what you do next. Not every person who contacts you is your perfect match.
 However, if you get a pattern of wrong matches, then you may need to further adjust your wording/images or look at where you are not being congruent in what you say you want and what you are doing to get it.
You may also want to keep a copy of your list in your business plan and before you sign off on any new product or service review the list to make sure that it will be attractive to your ideal customer base.
Once you have a match, then initiate deeper conversation to see if you truly do have things in common, highlighting the great features but allowing the person to make their own decision.
If you think about dating yet again – if you go straight from hello to marry me without drawing breath, you will get many many knock backs. Allow the relationship to naturally develop rather than force the pace. Only once the person is totally comfortable with you and your offering, can you then take it to the next level.
This may sound pie in the sky – but the funny thing is it works! By being clear in who you are, communicating why you are fantastic and what you can offer a certain group of people, you naturally tend to attract them to you without any hassle or stress. After all, isn't there enough stress in business without having to constantly hunt for game?
If you would like a professional copywriter to help you attract your ideal client, call Heart Harmony on 07 3351 8844 and we can help you put your business into words.
| HR Tip of the Week - Attracting great candidates |
Attracting great candidates for vacancies follows much the same principles as outlined above. Candidates need to "buy" your job and your business as a great place to work before you can buy their time and commitment.
The questions to ask yourself in this situation are what makes us a great employer? What can we offer our team that other businesses can't or don't?
You also need to create an ideal candidate profile - both in terms of skills required as well as things such as personality and approach. These get documented into position descriptions that you make available to candidates before they apply for the role. Candidates who don't match your role generally will not apply for the positions (although I have had abattoir workers apply for Pharmacist roles in the past).
You need to review your online presence in both formal channels such as your website, as well as social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace as well as blogs. Smart businesses put in place social site monitoring so they can quickly be alerted to the name of their business appearing, check the context and reply if needed.
Finally you need to match all candidates against your ideal candidate profile. Remember you are looking for the best person for the role - and not the best person!
 Often people ask me who I learn from in my business, so over the next few weeks I will be sharing information about some of my mentors and favourite people.
Hands up if you watched "The Secret". It was great ... as far as it went in terms of the law of attraction. However in terms of applying the concept to marketing one of the people I really value is Debbie Bermont from Outrageous Business Growth.
Starting her life in traditional marketing, she now uses the law of attraction to help businesses succeed in any economy.
Her CD program "How to Develop an Outrageous Business Growth Marketing Plan" , her book "Outrageous Business Growth the fast track to explosive sales in any economy" and her CD set "Double your income with half the effort" are full of practical marketing tips, strategies and ideas.
She also runs regular free teleseminars to help take your business to the next level. Debbie is someone who walks her talk, so check out her website.
This week the Superbowl with all its hoopla and excitement was on. What was even better were the Superbowl ads. Check out the trends from this years ads and what this means for small business (and you don't even have to spend millions to get the results)!
Building Your Relationship With Your Clients
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog also included the Laptop Led Recession Recovery and the Quote of the Week
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