Understanding Where Your Ideal Client Is

There is a massive disconnect between the problem your ideal client knows they have and the product you are selling. Hands down one of the biggest marketing mistakes I see is that entrepreneurs market to the problem they KNOW their ideal clients needs to solve BUT that isn’t always the problem the ideal client believes that they have. Mind bend right? 

 

You have to market to the problem the client believes that they have not the one you solve. Let me give you an example, say your ideal client wants to get back your flat stomach post baby. Many great fitness professionals realize that it is a combination of diet and fitness…so if you were selling a program that is mainly around the food you eat – “Get the flat abs you want in the kitchen” you wouldn’t be able to position that way. Because the ideal client believes they need to exercise to lose the weight. 

Another example is in the education industry. I have a client who has a membership community about creating good study habits and getting organized when it comes to schooling. The majority of his ideal clients, the parents, are concerned with kids getting good grades. Therein lies the disconnect. His program and the marketing of it needs to directly relate the problem the ideal client believes that they have, their kids getting good grades so that they can get into college. He knows, based on 20 plus years of experience in education the key to success is getting organized, creating routing and having structures in place to succeed (highly simplified). See where I am going with this?

 

Therein lies the problem. These are just two examples of this, yet, it is rampant in the online place, the massive disconnect between the offer and the client’s problems. How do you bridge that gap? Researching your ideal client is the first step in closing that gap. More often than not people glaze over truly understanding who their ideal client is and going deep with one person. They stay at the surface level out of fear that their won’t be enough clients if they niche too deeply. Then they end up marketing to everyone instead of who they truly want to support. 

 

The second issue is that many entrepreneurs fail to put their marketing hats on and adjust their strategy to meet their ideal client where they are, with the beliefs around the problem they have. The educate, educate, educate and fail to ever put the marketing hat on. If they do they are marketing to their expertise vs what the ideal client needs to hear to move forward. Yet, another disconnect. 

 

Bridging the gap is critical to success. Perhaps one of those two issues resonate with you or perhaps both of them do. Either way, having an awareness of this gap in marketing will help you begin to close it. The bridge can close over  time within your community through value driven macro content and educating your ideal client. Other times you have to change your marketing strategy to fit where your ideal client is. The majority of the time it is a combination of both. As I’ve mentioned before there are three types of audience when it comes to marketing, cold traffic, warm traffic, hot traffic this will play into how much you most educate and how much you must meet the client where they are. This is especially key when launching as well, the content you send to you list might look different than the content you send to your social media or someone who has never met you before. 

 

I find myself looking through the lens of who is this for in my audience when crafting my messages. Looking through this lens helps me to determine what the clients needs to hear in order to take the next step in the client journey. Meeting ideal clients where they are is like swimming downstream. It will increase your conversion rate, it will rapidly grow your community and it will save you lots of headaches. What questions do you have about understanding where your ideal client is?

 

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