If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
I’m sure you’ve heard that saying before! Well, you’re in the right place because November is the month of business planning!
So as you work through my Strategic Planning Template (get it here) to map out your next 12 months in business, there is one very important area we haven’t discussed yet … your ideal client!
When you’re reviewing your business, remember to include your ideal client, and more specifically, whether your target audience and ideal client are still the same or have they changed?
In this blog, you’ll learn how to review your ideal client and some considerations as you do it.
Can my ideal client change?
As your business evolves and grows, so too can your ideal client. The clients you start out in business may not be the same clients you have a couple of years down the track.
Here are some things to consider:
- You will gain more experience working with different clients. Are all of these clients your ideal client or has your ideal client evolved too?
- Have you launched new services or products? If you have, your target market may have changed. Are you serving the same demographic or is it different?
- Have you picked up some clients who are actually not your ideal clients? As you review your client list again, you may find it’s time to let go of clients who are not ideal for you.
How to review your ideal client
Reviewing your ideal client is an easy task that should actually give you great joy! How exciting would it be to review your target audience and ideal client list and open up a new world of opportunities and more of those amazing clients!
Here’s how to review your ideal client again:
- WHO: Who are they? Write down in detail their age, gender, family status, hobbies, professional background, social likes, income, location and so on.
- WHAT: What industry are they from and what type of business do they have? What is the structure of their business and how much is their annual revenue? For example, six figures.
- PAINS: What is keeping your ideal clients up at night and what problems do they have in their business that they desperately want to fix?
- SPEND: What is your ideal client’s buying power (how much they can afford to pay you or spend with you on an annual basis?).
- HOW: How can you help them? What can you do to take away their problems? How can your services and products do this for them?
HOT TIP: Go over your current client list and look at your favourite clients. Why do you enjoy working with them? Review them so you can reverse engineer attracting more of these types of people.
Your ideal client is just one of the business foundations to review at this time of year. There are also other business systems you will need to review as your business changes and grows. Streamlining your systems will minimise the guesswork, errors, time wasted and money lost, and in turn, increase productivity and efficiency to save your sanity.
