Defining your ideal client is a crucial part of any business strategy. Or put another way - I’m guessing there are certain people you’re delighted to hear from when you get an enquiry from them in your inbox and others… well not so much.

And it goes without saying that you’d like to attract more of these super wonderful people!

But why is knowing who our ideal client is important?

To be able to attract these dreamboats you have to know how to define your ideal client and that’s where this post comes in.

Knowing who our ideal client is, gives us a basis for almost everything in our business - from what problems they have which we solve with our offerings, to what vocabulary they use, to the colours they’re drawn to and so much more. By having clarity on all of these things we can set ourselves up to attract more of these folks (the dream right!)

This post may contain affiliate links. These are denoted by a *. If you make a purchase via one of these links I may get a small kickback. I only recommend products and services I use and love myself! Thanks in advance :)

Wanna follow along and create (or refine) your ideal client as we go?

I gotcha covered friend…

Download the free ideal client workbook & let’s go step by step through this together!

Start with the basics - define the demographic identifiers of your ideal client

The basics are also known as the demographics. These are key pieces of foundational information that describe your ideal client. These could be things like where they live, their gender identification, age, income bracket, job and so on. They are essentially facts about them.

Examples of demographic factors include:

Age
Gender identification
Location
Job role
Income bracket
Marital status
Do they have children?
Level of education

These basics are very important to know, not just for defining your marketing strategy, but also refining your service offerings. What a lawyer needs in a coach, is not what an actress might need for example. Understanding these demographic factors gives you a great starting point when building your ideal client avatar, but it’s where most people stop… and you’re not most people.

2. Understand your ideal client’s motivations, reservations & turn offs - the psychographic factors, AKA their why!

Demographic identifiers will only get you so far, for example I am going to struggle to tailor messaging to someone simply by knowing they come from Martinique and have an income of €50,000-€60,000 a year.

Cue, psychographic segmentation. This is a step that often gets missed, getting under the skin of your ideal clients and understanding more about what makes them tick, what leads them to trust, buy, recommend or avoid certain service providers. To learn more about the power of Psychographic profiling when creating your ICA - read this.

This step often requires that you hop on a call or do a survey with people that fit your ideal client’s profile from a demographic perspective to find out more.

For help with this grab my free ideal client worksheet - it walks you through the process step by step, highlighting the areas to focus on & even gives you scripts & fill in the blank style mad-libs to help you navigate what can be a confusing & tricky process!

3. See who your ideal clients already trust and are buying from

I’d imagine that you already have connections with a bunch of people that fit the profile of your ideal client, or certainly can easily find them online via facebook, instagram or linkedin.

Now’s the moment to see who they’re already loving! On instagram this might be accounts they’re already following, content you see them engaging with or who they chose to do their recent rebrand. If it’s someone in your real life network you might know where they prefer to grab coffee and why, what clothes shops they tend to shop at and who they’ve chosen as their coach.

Look at these brands, or buying choices and see if you can find patterns in their behaviours - are they drawn in by quality, a particular aesthetic, convenience or do they choose based on a certain set of ethics?

All of this gives you valuable insight into what they’re drawn to and why and feeds into your overall profile of your ideal client.

4. Define your ideal client and test them with real people

So now you have a good amount of insight and information it’s time to test it out and refine it. If you haven’t already chatted to, or got information directly from some of your ideal clients I highly recommend that you do.

You can get seriously valuable input and feedback on, what’s important to them, why they buy, their big turn offs or concerns and more from some pretty simple listening exercises or surveys.

Even if this is simply validating what you thought you knew, it’s really useful to know you’re moving forward without making assumptions.

5. Create and use your ideal client

So now the data collection and validation phase is over it’s time to create and start using your ICA. Like most things, this is different strokes for different folks - you might find a bullet point list of traits and information is what’s most useful, or a drawing with key things written on it. Some people prefer a long-form story style example.

Check out the templates in my Ideal Client Avatar workbook if you need some help!

(Seriously - without templates & a structure, this stuff can feel like a minefield, so do yourself & favour & save a tonne of time by having the guide help you work through it step by step!)

Whatever works for you is cool, but once you’ve committed your ideal client to paper (electronically or physically!) the final step (and the one most people seem to skip!) is to use it!

This can be trickier than it sounds - it can be tough to look at your ideal client and realise your existing messaging is wrong, or that your services need tweaking, or even that you need a rebrand so that you’re aligning yourself with them and what they’re looking for. But it’s here that the magic happens!

You are here FOR them, and for the impact that your service, or product will have on their lives. By making this pivot sales no longer feels like sales, marketing no longer feels sleazy, fake or cold, in fact even copy will often feel like it flows as you’re super clear on who you’re talking to. For help on developing a website that attracts and connects with your ICA - read this.

So there you have it! Everything you need to know to define your ideal client.

Final call to grab the free workbook to help you through the process (it’s a mega timesaver, and the templates & fill in the blank structure will help you get from clueless to crystal clear much faster than going it alone) good luck!