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I believe that most people go into business backwards. They develop a product or service that they love and then try to find people to buy it. But it’s a million times easier to find people with a pressing problem or desire and fulfill it.

This is how my business started although it was more by accident than my incredible business mind. Someone I knew heard me talking about websites and asked if I could help her improve her website rankings. So I did (I started web marketing with search engine optimization) and managed to achieve excellent results for her.

Then she asked me the fateful question of what I could do next. Purely from my own gut feeling I thought we should rewrite the website to make it more friendly and easy to use. So I did that, her clients loved it and suddenly she started pimping me out to all her other friends with businesses as well.

Do you know your market inside out?

However since most people reading this will be in business already it’s a bit late to go back and start all over again from scratch. But we can make sure we get to know our market inside out. We need to have a picture in our mind of our ideal clients so we know what they look like when we meet them.

So ask yourself some simple questions like:

·         Who is your ideal client?

·         Who do you love to deal with?

·         Who makes you the most profit?

Describing your ideal client

The questions above will get you thinking and help you define your ideal client in useful terms. But I want to point out that you need to describe your client from multiple different angles. Because while most people focus on demographics I believe their psychographics are much more important for really being successful.

So what exactly does this mean?

Demographics

I think of demographics as all the statistical data you can collect on your market. Things like their age, income, location etc fall in here. But this is where most market research stops and I believe misses the real point of understanding your market.

Psychographics

While there are more technical definitions I view psychographics as the psychology of your market (funny that). This is where you really get in touch with your ideal client’s hopes, dream, problems, feelings and so on. This is where you really start to understand your ideal client on a deeper level.

I always find the best way to understand your market is to be part of it. This means that you’re solving a problem or fulfilling a desire for your clients that you once shared. If this isn’t the case then you need to do your best to feel empathy for your clients and really understand where they’re coming from.

Discover your ideal client’s story

I find a very powerful way of getting in touch with your ideal client is to write down their story. This means describing everything about them so you understand completely where they’re coming from. By doing this exercise you’ll have a detailed description of your ideal client and can then be on the lookout for them every day.