That Time Your Best Friend Harassed You While Wearing a Feather Headdress
So, how’s that Ideal Client Avatar coming along? Ready to slit your wrists?
Here’s a little secret: no one cares about your ideal client profile. Not even you.
Isn’t that why you’ve been avoiding it? Why you’ve been telling yourself:
Eh, I don’t really need to write it down and answer a thousand stupid questions and sketch a picture of my client to hang over my desk. I have it aaaaalllllll up here. <taps forehead>
The reason, of course, is that typical branding advice is robotic. (This is the point when, if you and I were talking in person, I would hang my right arm out at a right angle and say DOES NOT COMPUTE in my best mechanical voice. Get in line, fellas!)
Typical branding advice tells us to choose an age range, a marital status, and a household income for the people we want to attract. (Snore.)
Typical branding advice focuses on statistics.
Around here, we don’t do typical. Because your clients aren’t statistics. They’re humans. (Tweet that!)
The thing about humans, is that we have personalities. We have goals and values. We have likes and dislikes. That's what you should be focusing on. And to make the process just a little bit more fun, we’re going to talk about your best friend. (Because best friends make everything more fun.)
How would you describe your best friend?
You would probably talk about what kind of music she likes, what she studied in college, and her personal style.
You might mention her political beliefs, where she's traveled, what her goals are.
You would definitely talk about what you did together the last time you were in the same town.
You may or may not share the story about the first time you met in college, when she had a few too many drinks and nearly tackled you while donning a Native American feather headdress that she found in the basement. (No? Just me?)
The point is, you need to know who you’re selling to. Who you’re trying to attract. And if you can describe that person (almost) as intimately as you can describe your best friend, you’re in a better position to understand exactly what she’s looking for, and exactly what will win her loyalty (and her heart).
THAT is how you become the best option. In fact, that’s how you become the only option.
I like to share extra goodies with the humans on my email list. This week, you'll see some of the questions I ask my clients when they're trying to figure out who they want to attract. (Ok fine, their ideal client.)
Not on the list? We can fix that right now:
