10 MIN LEZEN
Do you know your ideal target group well? To attract new customers and expand your customer base, it is crucial to know your top customers well. This will add a personal touch to your sales and marketing results, which will increase your success. In this article, you will discover how an ideal customer profile can strengthen your marketing and sales activities, and how to better understand them with our Ideal Client Profile Canvas.
It is one of those pitfalls that happens to organisations all too often: The focus in your marketing mix is sometimes too much on WHAT you are selling, losing sight of WHO you are selling to. However, this is crucial for strong customer relationships, because even with the best product in the world, you won’t achieve success if you target the wrong audience (or if you target your current audience in the wrong way).
The classic pitfall in marketing and communications
Many companies target the widest possible audience with their marketing. They think, “The bigger my customer base, the more it will generate.” This seems logical, but unfortunately does not always work. With a general, ineffective message, you convince fewer potential customers and are less likely to attract new ones. Successful communication requires a super-concrete and specific message. This only works if you focus your sales and marketing activities on a small, clearly defined target group with specific needs and wishes. That way, you can tell exactly the things that strike the right chord and make your marketing much more effective. But how exactly do you find those ideal customers who will bring you the most?
Sales is evolving along with various sectors, with colleagues increasingly contributing to the sales funnel through direct or indirect contact with customers.
The Ideal Client Profile Canvas for sharper marketing and sales
Collecting basic marketing data such as age, gender and location is nowhere near enough to really get your marketing messages in focus these days. You need to dig much deeper, to know your ideal customer on an intimate level, down to the smallest details. Ideal Client Profile Canvas is an excellent tool for achieving this.
The Ideal Client Profile Canvas is like an outline of your ideal client – the one who truly gets value from your product or service and in turn adds value to your business. In short, these are the customers you secretly hope for. They give you valuable insights for your sales and marketing plans, so you can focus your precious time and resources on the right customers and communicate in a personalised way for higher conversion.
Ideal client profile versus buyer persona
In the marketing world, you often hear the term “buyer persona” thrown around. This is really nothing more than a detailed description of your target audience, presented as an individual with their own name and personality. Although “ideal client profile” and “buyer persona” are often used interchangeably, they are extensions of each other rather than synonyms. Your ideal client profile is an outline of the type of person or company your ultimate client should be, while a buyer persona offers more in-depth analysis of potential buyers.
You can see the ideal customer profile on the Ideal Client Profile Canvas as the ultimate potential buyer persona. Maybe there are even more than one and product A has a different type of ideal buyer than product B. So ideally, it’s best to create one to three Ideal Client Profile Canvases for your entire company.
Getting started with the Ideal Client Profile Canvas
Time to take action! Download the Ideal Client Profile Canvas, and then below we briefly go through the essential fields for a complete client profile:
1. Data mapping
The data mapping part includes the collection of some standard metrics that are vital to determine your ideal client profile. For a B2B analysis, things like industry, number of full-time employees, region, company turnover and total number of employees play a key role. If you are focusing on B2C, you probably look more at demographics such as age groups or education levels. This data helps identify your most engaged customers and provides insight into which customers are at the core of your ideal customer profile.
2. Influences and factors
In this next part of our ideal client profile, we leave the standard criteria behind and focus on non-standard criteria specific to B2B activities. Think of crucial considerations, such as whether your client is primarily concerned with P&L (profit) or is instead focused on customer relationships and employee experience. It is essential to identify such factors because the more you know about your customer’s priorities and values, the more targeted you can tailor your products and services to their specific needs.
3. The decision-making committee
Finally, the decision-making committee is a key element in determining your ideal client profile. Who are the decision makers? What drives them and motivates them in their decision-making process? By properly understanding these dynamics and gaining these insights, you as an organisation can anticipate the needs of different stakeholders. This way, you align your approach to various interests and priorities and not only increase the likelihood of successful collaborations, but also strengthen the long-term relationship with your ideal client.
Attract and engage more clients?
Still need some extra support to get to the bottom of your ideal client? Our Markies growth agents are ready to work with you through the steps of the Ideal Client Profile Canvas. Get in touch with us, and we will schedule a digital session and discuss how we can make your marketing and sales processes super personal and successful. See you soon!
