_edited_edited.png)
As a business owner, understanding your ideal client is crucial for the success and growth of your business. Knowing your ideal client helps you tailor your products or services, marketing strategies, and overall business approach. It is also a crucial element in helping you create an effective website that can become your most valuable selling tool!
While it is important to know the demographics of your ideal client such as age, gender, location, education level, occupation, and income, knowing the psychographics is just as important if not more so.
Psychographics includes your ideal clients' values, interests, hobbies, lifestyle choices, attitudes, and behaviors. Understanding their motivations and preferences helps you connect with them on a deeper level.
In this article, I am going to share with you the most important things you need to know about your ideal client and their psychographics.
#1 Needs & Wants
Your clients' needs refer to the fundamental requirements, problems, or challenges that a client wants to address or solve through your products or services. Needs are essential and are typically driven by practical considerations. They represent the underlying reasons why clients seek out your business.
For example, a client may come to you because they need a haircut. This is a fundamental need.
Client wants, on the other hand, are the additional desires, preferences, or aspirations that clients have beyond their basic needs. Wants are often influenced by emotional or psychological factors. Because these wants can vary greatly from one client to another, it is important to understand your ideal client so that you can focus on and address their very specific wants.
Think about what you have heard, both negative and positive about your client's experiences with yours and other businesses. This will help you gain valuable insight into what is most important to them. This information can then be used to help articulate that you understand their needs and wants and that you are willing and able to deliver.
#2 Their Motivation
At the heart of your client's psychographic is their motivation. People's motivations can vary greatly and it is important to get inside the mind of your ideal client to determine what motivates their decisions. Below are the most common motivating factors that drive people to make a purchase or choose a particular business over another.
To Fulfill An Emotional Desire
Your potential customer may need a haircut but what is the emotional desire they are looking to fulfill with their haircut? Do they want to feel more attractive? More confident?
To Meet a Personal Goal
This is one of the top motivating factors in the health and wellness industry but can also be a big motivating factor in other businesses as well.
To Solve a Problem
This is similar to fulfilling an emotional desire or reaching a personal goal but is typically more rooted in practicality. Your haircut client may be a busy mom who is more motivated to have a style that is easy to maintain than to have a style that makes her feel more confident.
Status or Prestige
If you are in the high-end or luxury space within your industry, status, and prestige are often highly motivating factors to your clients. The idea of gaining respect or admiration from others or enhancing their status or social reputation is at the forefront of this client's mind.
Convenience
Amazon changed the game for every business when it comes to convenience. Clients' expectations are at an all-time high when it comes to finding products and services that will save time and effort and make their lives easier and more efficient.
Pleasure & Enjoyment
This is also a huge motivating factor when it comes to the high-end, luxury space. Many consumers will choose to spend more for a product or service simply because the experience is more pleasurable and enjoyable.
Values
Many consumers will seek out businesses that align with their particular values or avoid businesses that are in conflict with them. If your ideal client is concerned with the environment, it is going to be a huge selling point that all of your products are environmentally safe and cruelty-free.
#3 Pain Points, Challenges, and Fears
The flip side of your ideal client's motivations are their pain points, challenges, and fears.
People are fearful that their needs, wants and motivations will not be met by you or your business. This fear is often rooted in past bad experiences where this was the case.
It is important that you identify these pain points, challenges, and fears so that you can address them head-on, sending your ideal client a clear message that you know them, you understand them and they can trust you to fulfill their needs, wants, and motivations.
To begin to create a clear image of your ideal client, start by writing out their needs, wants, motivations, pain points, challenges, and fears. Next, list all of the ways that your business does or could address these points. Finally, make a list of the specific features and benefits of your products and services as they relate to each of these points.
To help, I have created an Ideal Client Worksheet. Click below to download the worksheet.
This valuable information can be used throughout your business including your marketing messages, taglines, sales presentations, policies and procedures, systems, and, of course, your website.
Keep a look out for my next article where I will show you how to put the information and knowledge you gained here into action to create a website that builds trust with your ideal client and is guaranteed to help you stand out above your competition and build a long-lasting and loyal client following.