7 Easy Steps to Create Your Ideal Customer Profile

7 Easy Steps to Create Your Ideal Customer Profile

It can be challenging to identify your ideal customer. It takes work, research, and patience. Some business owners are hesitant to limit their audience: Isn’t it better to target everybody and see who bites? Unfortunately, unless you have a massive budget, that strategy is doomed to fail. If you try to reach everybody, you’ll get nobody. Your message won’t resonate. It will fail to cut through the noise and speak directly to your potential buyer.

Small businesses need to limit their focus so they can target the right people with the right offer. Establishing an ideal customer profile (ICP) allows you to narrow your focus and maximize results.

With a good ICP, your message will reach the people who need to hear it.

In just a few easy steps, you can create a working profile and then refine it as you learn more. It just takes some planning and a little bit of trial-and-error, but once you’ve created a profile, you will start to see your efforts pay off.

What Is an Ideal Customer Profile?

An ideal customer profile describes your target audience as an individual. It defines, in specific terms, their demographics and the psychological factors that influence them. Businesses use an ICP to figure out where and how to reach their potential buyers.

Demographic information includes:

Age
Location
Income Level
Language
Profession
Marital status

Psychological data includes values, attitudes, behaviors (especially those related to the products they buy), personality type, and pain points. Understanding your target’s pain points is critical because it identifies the problems they face. Your job is to make sure they know that you provide the solution.

The Benefits of Identifying Your Ideal Customer

It takes some work to research and identify your target market, but the benefits are well worth it. Businesses identify their ideal customer to:

Maximize Their Efforts. No business has the resources to market to everyone. You need to identify the best lead for your business so you can maximize your time and budget.

Nurture Leads Effectively. The key to successful marketing is identifying and nurturing leads. The research generated by creating your ICP will lay the foundation for all of your future marketing efforts.

Craft a Message that Resonates. Marketing relies on effective communication. If you don’t speak the language of your audience, they won’t buy from you. Your ideal customer profile will help you craft a message that resonates with your audience and motivates them to act.

Create an Army of Loyal Brand Advocates. By identifying your customers’ attitudes and beliefs, you can align these with your business’s vision and mission. This will increase brand loyalty among your customers.

Better Personalize Your Customer Journey. Knowing your customers allows you to foster a personal connection with them.

It’s Easy. Finally, the internet and online resources make it easier than ever to research your audience and pinpoint exactly who they are.

Without an ideal customer profile, you’re shooting in the dark. Here are the steps to creating your ideal customer profile.

Step 1 – Know Your Products

Start by getting to know your products front and back. Understand their features and how they’re used. If you haven’t already done so, create a unique value proposition (UVP) for your offering. Your UVP is a statement that explains how the product uniquely solves the customer’s problem.

Focus not only on the features of your product and how it’s used, but the benefits it brings to users. In other words, how does it improve someone’s life? This is important because this is the real reason someone uses your product.

For example, if you offer a cloud-based project management tool, it’s not the tool you’re selling but the time you’ve freed up for your users. Take a look at your products and see if you can reframe their benefits in this way.

Step 2 – Create a Broad Description

You know your product and you probably have a pretty good idea of who would buy it from you. Consider how your product would be used and who it would help. If you already have customers, think about the type of people who buy from you. Take down some notes but be ready to scrap everything if this preliminary research is proven wrong.

Later, you’ll gather objective data to create a solid ideal customer profile, but for now, this broad description is a good place to start.

Step 3 – Research Online

Search online for your target market so you can learn more about them. If you already have customers, start there. If not, here are some places you can look for potential audience members:

Social Media. Look at your current followers on social media, especially the ones that interact with you the most. Go through their profiles to find basic demographic information, but also check out their content to get a deeper understanding of who they are and what makes them tick.

Other ways to use social media include:

Searching for hashtags related to your product, your niche, or the broad profile you created.
Joining groups related to your niche and seeing who is most active there. Listen to conversations (this is called “social listening”).

Your Competitors. Check out your competitors. They’ve already done their marketing research so see what you can learn from them. Look at not only their followers and customers, but also get a feel for who they’re targeting with their marketing. If they’re more experienced or successful than you, you can learn from them.

Analytics. Look at your website analytics to see who’s visiting your site. You can get demographic information this way, but also see how much time they spend on which pages. This will give you some insights into their interests. For example, you might find that they engage more with video content than text.

You can also simply Google search with keywords to find out where your audience hangs out online so you can learn more about them.

Step 4 – Gather Data

Now you’re ready to start gathering data. There are two ways to gather data – directly and indirectly.

Direct data comes from personal interactions with your target audience. This includes things like surveys, interviews, and focus groups. You have to reach out to people and connect with them, which can take a great deal of time. But the data you receive will be well worth it. Through direct data gathering, you can find out how they feel, what issues they face, what problems they have, and how they buy the products they need.

Indirect data is much easier to gather but usually the insights aren’t as deep. This is the data you get from following people on social media, checking out blog comments, or seeing user-created content. Through indirect means, you can get demographic information and also extract valuable psychographic information.

A great place to start gathering data is with current customers and followers. Reach out to them and create an opportunity to receive direct feedback.

Seek demographic and psychographic data, but look especially for pain points, challenges, issues, and questions. Your audience members are motivated to resolve these and if you can offer some form of relief, it will be easy to engage with them.

Step 5 – Create Your Customer Profile

Create a customer profile that treats your audience as one single individual. Give them a name and make it personal.

You can’t put all the information you found into the profile. Some of this data might contradict each other. Look for patterns. When you see the same thing over and over again with members of your target audience, these are the things you should include.

What if you have two sets of unmistakable patterns? For example, you might find that your customers are evenly split between Europe and North America.

If you observe something like this, you might want to segment your target market, creating two different profiles for each. But keep in mind that this will involve a lot of extra work, so only segment if it’s totally necessary.

You might instead choose to dig deeper – find something these two distinct markets have in common that overrides the demographic information you’ve uncovered (e.g. they live on two different continents, but 80% of both groups come from rural areas).

Step 6 – Use Your Customer Profile

Now, it’s time to put your ideal customer profile to use and see the difference. Here are some of the things you’ll do with your ICP:

Create a Marketing Message and UVP. Now that you know your audience, you can create marketing materials that speak directly to them. Craft a message that communicates the unique value your product offers in a way that resonates by addressing your audience’s pain points.

Choose Marketing Channels. Your ICP tells you exactly where to go to connect with your audience. The key to successful marketing is to find your audience and put your offer in front of them. You’ll also know the best times to engage them.

Create High Quality Content That Will Convert. With a keen understanding of your target market, you can create and share content that appeals to them.

Target Your Advertising to the Right People. You can use demographic information to target the right people with your ad campaigns. Social media ad networks allow you to choose profile features to target.

Product Development. Use your understanding of your ideal customer to develop new product lines. You know what problems they face, so create products that offer solutions.

By using your ideal customer profile, you’ll be able to market more efficiently. Even with limited resources, you’ll know exactly who to target and how to reach them, putting you on an equal footing with more established companies with larger marketing budgets.

Step 7 – Revise and Refine

But wait! You’re not done yet.

Maintaining an accurate and effective ideal customer profile is an ongoing process. Once you’ve created and implemented, keep gathering feedback and refining. The market and your industry are always evolving. It is crucial that you keep up with these changes. Revise your ICP to reflect these changes and it will provide a powerful boost to your marketing.

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How to Build A Community for Your Brand

Marketing

How to Build A Community for Your Brand

What separates a great brand from an average one? Great brands don’t just make products; they build communities, turning their customers into loyal fans and advocates.

Think of major brands we all know like Apple and Starbucks. Their customers don’t just buy from them because they love their products. These brands have a greater significance and bigger presence in the lives of their customers. This is due to a sense of community and an identification with the brand.

A community gets people involved. A highly engaged audience can be easily converted into repeat customers who buy from you consistently for years.

Why Are Communities Important?

Communities raise awareness of your brand and help instill it in the minds of your audience. Your brand needs to stand out among the competition. By creating a loyal group of engaged members, you can set yourself apart.

Communities also provide a great opportunity to offer value. It can be a place where you deliver helpful information, answer questions, and give people a place to talk and network. This additional value, with no strings attached, will make your customers love your brand even more than they already do.

Your brand community gives you direct access to your valued customers. Companies are always looking for insights on their audience’s demographics, feelings, and behaviors. The community you create allows you to interact and listen in on your followers’ conversations, so it’s a great place to learn about them.

Finally, your brand community already exists! Somewhere, people are gathering and talking about your brand. Building a community means connecting to these people and getting your brand directly involved so you can reap the benefits.

Define Your Business Goals

There are many things you can do with your brand community. Most businesses use their communities to give their audience more value, learn about audience members, and gradually grow sales. But before you get into the specifics of your community, you need to define your goals as this will guide your other decisions.

Your goals might be to:

Increase Brand Awareness. Use your online group to get people talking about you and telling others.

Earn Directly. Although it shouldn’t be the focus of your community, you can sell products directly to its members and earn through it.

Develop Market Research. The focus of your community could be to gain insights and feedback.

Build Your Reputation. By helping your audience members directly through your group, you can establish yourself as an authority in your topic area.

Nurture Leads. Your brand community could be part of your sales funnel. You can use it to qualify and nurture leads.

Increase Brand Loyalty. Your community could be a place where you drive customers to buy more from you.

Improve Customer Onboarding. Use your brand community to help buyers get even more out of your products.

Cultivate Influencers. You can use your community to interact with your biggest brand advocates and get them to spread the word.

Facilitate Networking. Give your customers a place to network with each other.

You may have more than one purpose for creating your brand community, but pick one of the above to focus on. This will help you decide how you will build, manage, and promote the community.

What Kind of Community Is Right for Your Business?

What kind of brand community should you create? Your community should offer value and be something your audience is excited to join. Brand community models you can choose from include closed entry, open, subscription, or mastermind. Once you decide which is right for your business, you can then choose your platform.

Closed Entry. This is a private community that’s closed to the outside world. The advantage of this type of community is its exclusivity. Your members feel like they’re part of something created just for them. The core membership of this community could be people who have already purchased your products. Use this type of community to improve your customer onboarding process.

Open Model. Anyone can join an open community. This is the right choice if your primary goal is to grow brand awareness. Use this community as an entry point for new people just entering your marketing orbit and a place to demonstrate the value you offer.

Subscription Model. If you want to earn directly through your online community, you can offer a subscription model. But to keep people subscribed you need to offer tangible value.

Mastermind. A mastermind is a peer-to-peer mentoring group where members help each other with their problems. This is a great choice for coaching businesses or online courses. Once people complete a course, they can join the mastermind and keep growing.

You have several options for community building. Social media sites like Facebook include tools and features to help you create a community, and since most people are already there, it’s easy to join.

However, a self-hosted site might work best for you. If you use a social media platform, you are limited by their rules and the features they offer. Self-hosted means you own your site. This might be advantageous if you want to connect it with your ecommerce store or blog.

Your Role in the Community

As you set up your brand community, define your role in it. You’ll have to act as moderator, creating rules and enforcing them. Rules might include things like no profanity, no negative comments, and no harassment. Also establish guidelines around promotional posts so that your members aren’t spamming each other.

It’s important that you interact with community members. Exactly how you do this will depend on your goals, but you’ll probably offer help where needed, share your expertise, and join conversations wherever you can.

One interactive role you’ll definitely need to adopt is that of facilitator, especially early on, when there’s not much conversation happening. Start threads and get people talking by asking questions and encouraging them to share their opinions and experiences.

Your role is to also keep the community focused on its members. It shouldn’t be all about you and your brand. Say hi to new members and welcome them into the group. Encourage people to share their successes and celebrate them. This is how you make it a welcoming place where your customers want to be.

Tips on Building Your Community

Once your brand community is set up, you’ll need to promote it across all your platforms. Create a simple message explaining the benefits of joining and communicate this where you can. Think outside the box and create videos and other content to generate interest.

Here are a few more tips for attracting members to your community:

Use Social Proof

A great way to get the word out is to use social proof. Get your most vocal members to create short testimonials describing why they enjoy your brand community or how it has helped them. This will demonstrate to others why they need to join. It’s more powerful than a message from you.

Partner with Influencers

Another way to grow your membership is to partner with influencers in your niche. Identify people who have your community’s target market in their audience and make them an offer. One type of offer is to cross-promote. You can tell your audience about their content and products, and they’ll promote your group to their audience.

Share Where They’ll See It

Promote your community everywhere you have a presence online and off, being sure to target those places where your ideal audience will see it. Use the short blurb you created that describes succinctly the benefits your community offers and make sure it resonates with your audience. Put this blurb and link in your social media profiles, bio for guest articles and interviews, the sidebar of your blog or website, and anywhere else you might come into contact with potential members.

Once it’s up and running, your brand community will offer a place for your audience members to hang out, learn from you, and get the most value out of what you offer.

Social Media: 7 Tips For Planning Your Social Media Schedule to Maximize Results

Marketing

7 Tips For Planning Your Social Media Schedule to Maximize Results

What do you do when it’s time to post on social media?

You probably sit down at the computer knowing your audience is there waiting to hear from you, but the words just won’t come. What should you say to them? How do you get started?

If you really want to do well on social media, you need to create a plan and posting schedule. This will remove any uncertainty and doubt. Your calendar will tell you exactly what to post and when.

Beyond helping you get started, creating and maintaining a social media schedule offers a number of other benefits:

With a plan and schedule, you’ll steadily work towards achieving your social media goals and get results
By monitoring your activity, you’ll learn the best times to engage with your audience
Your schedule will help you post consistently, which is essential for social media marketing success

Social media is an excellent place to grow your audience and get to know them, but it can’t be done in a haphazard fashion. You need a targeted strategy to achieve tangible results.

Clarify Your Goals and Identify Your Audience
Initially, the purpose of setting up a social media schedule is to create a roadmap that will help you get a handle on content development and posting. Once you start using the plan and measuring your results, you’ll be able to refine it so that it’s even more effective.
Start by clarifying your goals.
What do you want to achieve with your social media activity? You may want to grow your audience, build relationships, establish your reputation, get feedback on your products, or boost sales using your social media channels. Picture where you want to be in a few months’ time and how social media will get you there. This will help you clarify how to interact with your audience and what type of content to post.
Next, clearly define your audience.
You need to know as much as possible about them. Get familiar with their favorite social media platforms, their preferred content, and the problems they face.
You should be creating and sharing content that’s interesting for your audience. It should add value, no matter what your goal. This is what gets your audience to engage with it. So, it’s important to take some time and identify your audience and its needs.
Set up Your Social Media Schedule
The most popular social media sites right now are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. That’s doesn’t include YouTube, which can also be considered a social media site. And of course, there’s TikTok, if that’s what your target market loves. Use your target market research to get an idea of which sites your customers are active on and what they do there. Try to focus on at most three of these to post on regularly.
How often should you post?
Each platform has its own guidelines for posting frequency so take a look at what the most active people in your market do. For example, it’s recommended that you post on Twitter and Pinterest multiple times a day. For Facebook and Instagram, post once or twice daily. You can limit posting on LinkedIn to once or twice a week, creating longer, more in-depth content.
But remember that these are just basic guidelines to get you started. You may find that your audience is more active and responsive on one platform versus another. If that’s the case, shift most of your focus and resources to the platform with the most activity.
When should you post?
For each site and target audience, there is an optimal time to post. You’ll have to discover these peak times, but they’re usually evenings, weekends, and when people are off work and scrolling through their feeds.
Save time by scheduling posts across multiple social networks, using management platforms like Tweetdeck, Buffer, Sprout Social, MeetEdgar, Hootsuite, PostPlanner, and ContentCal.
What Content Should You Post?
Posting more frequently usually delivers positive results, but there are a few things to keep in mind. First, remember that quality is as important as quantity. Don’t post so much that your content suffers as a result.

Also keep in mind your own time restraints and ability to develop content. How many posts can you reasonably produce per day? Increase your posting capacity by creating a mix of original content, shared content, and quick-and-easy content like visuals or quotes. You can also repurpose existing content from blog posts, emails, or other marketing pieces. All of this should be incorporated into your schedule.

Most of your content should be informational and helpful, limiting promotional posts to about 20% of your total content. Followers want content that helps them solve a problem or teaches them something valuable.

Your Social Media Content can include:

Articles
Links to articles or blog posts you have published elsewhere
Answers to commonly asked questions
Questions for your audience to get them talking
Videos
Infographics
Pictures that take people behind the scenes in your business or industry
Quick tips
Motivational quotes
High value offers
Resources to help your audience with problems they’re facing

Monitor Your Results and Make Improvements

Once you’ve set up your social media schedule and are posting regularly, you can start collecting data. Monitor your social media activity and gather feedback, using this information to optimize your content. Make note of your most popular posts and the times of day when your audience is most receptive to your content.

In fact, you may want to post at different times as an experiment to see what works best. Keep in mind that social media content has a lifespan of anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the content and platform. Track your results and then refine your strategy.

Each platform has its own insight tool that monitors performance. But social media management tools, like Hootsuite or Buffer, provide comprehensive information across multiple platforms and also offer customized reports.

Social Media Posting Do’s and Don’ts

Now that you have the most important information you need for creating your social media schedule, it’s time to make some decisions and plan it out. But before you do that, here are some do’s and don’t to consider:

DO create posting guidelines. Create guidelines for what topics to covers and language to use so employees or virtual help can post without sounding off-brand.
DON’T be spammy! Posting too often can appear spammy for some users so strike a good balance. Posting too much promotional content and constantly asking your followers to please share or retweet can also seem spammy. If you do this, people may tune out
DO use images. You may want to include finding or creating images into your regular social media calendar. Even if you’re posting text content, images help it get seen and shared.
DON’T steal images. Create your own or use stock images or creative commons. There are plenty of fair-use images available for free. Paying for a service can get you access to even more.
DO engage with other users’ content as well as posting your own. Set aside time in your schedule for reading your feed, commenting, and sharing. This will help you get seen.
DON’T post the same content repeatedly. If you’re excited about something and want to post twice or three times, that’s okay, but don’t make it a habit. Keep creating or curating content so you keep it fresh. Repurpose if you want to use a piece of content again.
DO read through posts one last time before posting. Look for misspellings or grammar mistakes, and also anything that could be taken the wrong you. You won’t want to send the wrong message or accidentally offend anyone.
DON’T POST IN ALL CAPS. IT LOOKS WEIRD AND IT SEEMS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING ALL THE TIME.
DO write for your audience. You know your target profile and social media followers. Write to them like it’s a personal message, and talk to them about topics they’re interested in.

It takes time to perfect your social media schedule. Platform management tools and posting best practices will flatten the learning curve, speed up the process, and maximize results.

Are you ready to maximize your results with a social media schedule?