Have you ever experienced the magic of meeting someone new and instantly vibing with them? Within five minutes, you feel like you’ve known each other forever. Even if you never see that person again, that type of interaction leaves an impression.
As a business owner, that’s exactly the feeling you want your ideal customers to have when they interact with your company.
Every blog post, silly reel on Instagram, ad, product, or service you put out into the world should draw your ideal customers in and instantly make them feel like you are the perfect answer to the challenge they’re facing.
They should see something from your company and get that magical feeling like you somehow know them better than they know themselves.
Sounds like an impossible feat? Don’t worry, hun, I gotchu ❤️
Why it’s so important to understand your ideal customers
Since the dawn of hyper-commercialized time, companies have needed to understand their customers to make sure they’re addressing their needs directly.
But, hoo boy… If that was important 50 or 100 years ago, it’s only gotten about 1,000 times more important now.
When you’re trying to attract people to your business, you’re competing with (literally!) millions of other products, services, and highly entertaining but super distracting social media content (nothing stops the scroll quite like an adorably heartwarming video of a mama bear helping her cubs cross a street).
If you don’t grab someone’s attention right away, they’ve got plenty of other places to look. Even if you sell the best possible solution to their problem, they’re not going to care unless they feel that instant connection with your brand.
You don’t just want to grab someone’s attention, though. You want to build that deep connection.
To do that, you need to deeply understand the values that drive your brand, and how they intersect with what your customers care about.
How to identify your ideal customers
You might already think you know exactly who your ideal customer is, and maybe you do know them pretty well. If so, great! And, if that’s the case, you’re probably in the minority of small business owners.
Far too many small business owners think they don’t have the time to do the legwork to really understand their customers — and so, they wind up just guessing who their customers are and what they care about.
As we’ve just established, this is a bad idea all around. So, how do you learn who your customers are?
1. Talk to your customers
Crazy idea, I know, but the best way to get to know your customers is to talk directly to them.
Whether you’re running a service business or you sell products online, you probably have a list of customers saved somewhere (even if it’s not in a fancy CRM just yet).
- Start by reaching out to those customers who’ve purchased your bullseye package or service.
- Send them a quick email asking if they’d be willing to hop on a 15-minute call so you can learn about them and their experience with your company.
- Prepare a list of thoughtful questions in advance that will help you really understand the challenges your customers are facing that would bring them to your company.
If you’re not getting responses to your emails, you can try offering an incentive like an Amazon gift card. It doesn’t have to be a large amount of money to entice more people to respond and get on that call with you.
2. Surveys and questionnaires
The next best thing to speaking directly to your customers is having them fill out a survey or questionnaire.
We’re all pretty used to these by now as part of the purchasing process with many companies.
The key with a survey like this is to make it detailed enough that you get enough useful information, but not so detailed or cumbersome that it scares people away from filling it out.
Again, be prepared to offer an incentive of some kind to fill this out. The more responses you can get, the better.
3. Social listening
I don’t think I have to tell you how great social media can be for building brand engagement and awareness. Even if you haven’t had success doing this yourself (yet!), you know it’s true because you engage with brands on social media every day.
One of the great things about social media is that it also gives you a platform to talk to your customers and listen to what they’re telling you.
You can do this in a few different ways:
- Post polls on your social media channels asking specific questions.
- As much as the comments section can sometimes be the worst part of the internet, it’s a great place to see what people are asking and saying.
- Check your own comments section, but also go scope out the comments on your competitors’ social media channels!
- Look through your analytics tools (these can be the built-in analytics tools for the social media platforms you’re most active on, or a third-party tool) to see what people are interacting with the most and what seems to speak to your audience.
- Browse through reddit threads to see what challenges people in your demographic are facing.
You can combine any of these approaches to start gathering key information about your customers, so you can start putting yourself in their shoes and targeting your messaging to the things they care about.
Crafting messages that speak directly to your people
You’re boldly getting to know your customers for one key purpose:
So you can learn what they care about and craft your brand messaging to speak directly to those needs, frustration, fears, and desires.
But, to do that well, you also need to understand your own brand really well.
Clear and consistent brand messaging comes from a foundation of well-defined brand values, a crystal clear brand strategy, and an understanding of how those interact with who your customers are and what’s driving them emotionally, ethically, professionally, personally, and more.
Getting to know your customers and your own brand takes work, but it is totally worth it.
As a business owner, you will be so many steps ahead of your competitors if you stop guessing and start making informed decisions based on the data and on connecting with your customers.
If you’re feeling unclear about how to get all these pieces to work together, our Bold Brand Blueprint is the perfect place to start. Download it for free below.