January 14, 2018
How do I decide who my ideal buyers are?
Yesterday, I outlined a very high level marketing plan for new endeavors:
- Decide who your ideal buyers are
- Make a list ideal buyers with email addresses for each person
- Set up research calls with your ideal buyers to uncover what they value
- Create an offering that delivers the thing that they value
- Invite them to beta test the new offering in exchange for feedback, pricing guidance, testimonials, case studies, and/or referrals.
- Update your marketing materials with prices, testimonials, case studies.
But how do you decide who your ideal buyers are?
If you have some experience serving clients, you might be able to answer this question by thinking back to your best clients and making an educated bet that if you can find more people like them, it’ll lead to a mutually beneficial relationship.
But if you’re considering a truly new endeavor and/or have no experience to draw from, you’re going to want to do some research.
One approach is to decide who you’d LIKE your ideal clients to be.
- Do you love skiing? Maybe your ideal buyers are CMOs of world class ski resorts.
- Are you politically active? Maybe your ideal buyers are campaign managers in Washington D.C.
- Do you thrive around creative types? Maybe your ideal buyers are folks who produce Hollywood blockbusters.
Once you decide on who you’d like to work with (i.e., step 1 from the list above), continue to steps 2 and 3. (i.e., make a list of actual people who fit your selected description and set up research calls with them).
If you uncover something that your ideal buyer values, move on to step 4. If not, go back to step 1 and pick a different ideal buyer.
By the way... If this process sounds tedious, you didn’t pick a good ideal buyer. If you had, you’d be jumping at the opportunity to hop on a call with them. Pick someone who you’d love talk to and it’ll make the process much more rewarding.
Yours,
—J