Back in the day, making a connection with your customers was a lot easier. A customer would have to come into your brick and mortar store, you would greet them and get to know them while they were shopping, and vise versa, the customer would get to know you.
Before shopping on the internet became a thing, business owners didn’t need to spend half as much time considering all their marketing options and trying to determine who their ideal client is as we do now. Their customers would simply just walk into their store and overtime the business owner and customers would form a relationship .
Nowadays, customers turn to their smart phones to help solve their problems and decide what to buy. You’re not given the chance to chat it up with your potential customer and learn all about them but you have to find a way to speak to them when they come across your brand online.
In this post, I’ll give you some tips and tricks on how to attract, find, and speak to your ideal customer.
Disclaimer - it’s going to take some work on your part. Fun work, but still work. But I can guarantee if you spend some time learning about your ideal customer upfront, you’ll be able to find, attract, and speak to your ideal client much more easily, effectively, and increase sales.
Grab a pencil and paper or your laptop, and let’s get to work!
Before you can design your website or craft the perfect offer, you need to identify the problem your ideal client is going through. You have roughly 8 seconds to convince someone to stay on your website so it’s important that you speak to your ideal customer in the very first section of your website’s home page.
This process is actually quite liberating and exciting!
Use these questions to get started:
Write all of your answers down and try to envision your ideal client in your head. Be as descriptive as possible.
Once you have the answers to these questions, you will be able to fully address your ideal clients wants and needs in every interaction and tailor your efforts to speak to them best.
Let me let you in on a little secret - Nobody really wants what you sell - they want their problems solved.
So, when you’re writing the content for your website and any other marketing material, focus on what problems you solve for your clients.
The easiest way to do this is begin by making a list of the problems you solve for your clients. If you’re having trouble coming up with what your ideal customers problems are, think about what your customers tell you.
Pro tip: Look at your online reviews and pay close attention to what your customers are saying. More than likely, you’ll see some common phrases from your clients that you can use when crafting your message.
For example, does your client want a go-to clean skincare brand that will clear up their acne? Or do they want to know that the company they are buying granola from is made without sugar, additives, or gmo’s?
This approach will allow you to refocus your message so that it’s specific to your ideal clients and the problems they want to be solved.
If you’ve never heard of a hero section, you might automatically think of Indiana Jones, James Bond, or Wonder Woman. But they have nothing to do with the hero section of your website.
Your hero section is the very first section on your website’s home page. It’s the section before any scrolling - also known as above the fold.
If you want to read more about what to have on your website’s home page, check out this post.
Like I said earlier, you only have around 8 seconds to capture your audiences attention. One of the best ways to do is is by creating a captivating, informative, and meaningful hero section.
Since you already know your customers problems (we discussed this in step 1!), your hero section will be much more effective at speaking to your ideal clients.
For example, let’s say you own a clothing company and you sell high quality items at a fair price that are sustainably and ethically crafted. You’ve learned that your customers care about the quality of their clothing and how they are made.
Here’s an idea of what your website hero section could look like:
The purpose of this is to have a big, bold statement that catches your ideal customers attention instead of either throwing products at them right away or welcoming them to your site.
People are attracted to people they can relate to. Take advantage of that fact by creating a strong brand image across all of your social media platforms. Create a consistent tagline across your Website, Instagram, and Facebook. Use the same fonts, color schemes, and logos across all platforms.
In the first step we talked about the importance of understanding your ideal customer and where they spend their time online and how they get their information. Maybe you wrote down that they spend most of their time on Instagram. So your goal should now be to show up consistently on Instagram. Instagram (along with many other platforms) give you the ability to promote your content to other users. Run some promotions, change up your target keywords on your ads, and be consistent with your posting.
Pro tip: If you want to save yourself some time, sign up for Tailwinds or Planoly. These platforms auto post to your social media feeds, suggest keywords or hashtags to use, and give you lots of tips and tricks for how to appeal to your target audience.
Another way to attract your ideal customer is through Influencers. If you have an Instagram, you probably follow at least 2 Influencers already. Basically these people share a ton of content, have a lot of followers, and get paid to promote brands. This space is expected to continue massive growth over the next few years and might be worth investing into.
If you find an Influencer with a following that your brand would resonate with, send them a note, offer to let them try your products, and be ready to give them a chunk of moolah for advertising your brand.
Make your ideal clients an active part of your business by regularly communicating with them. Comment on the reviews that customers are leaving you on your website, follow up with comments that are left on your social media posts, engage with your followers through questions, polls, and contests on social media.
These two points go hand in hand. People develop a sense of loyalty to businesses that offer consistent quality backed by great customer service. Unfortunately, sometimes things happen and your products show up at your customers door broken, damaged, or they were sent the wrong items. This where great customer service comes in play. A customer can forgive a mistake as long as it’s correctly quickly and they are able to easily communicate with your customer service.
Nordstrom does a great job of this. They have used the power of fantastic customer service to remain a strong competitor in the retail space.
The more your ideal client gets exposed to your brand, the more likely they are to check it out. Show it where your ideal customer hangs out at and craft a message thats directly tailored to them and their problems.
Need help building your online store? Send me a note and let's see if were a good fit!
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