How to Build an Ideal Client Profile

A client profile or persona is a way to get insights into your audience and clientele. The client profile summarizes a specific customer type you are targeting in terms of already available statistical information, like demographics, revenue or income, and any other empirical data.

Creating a client persona helps you understand your ideal client profile, and how best to target them.

When you understand how your target audience thinks, you can offer them a solution that will win you that contract. Lead generation remains one of the more difficult challenges for most agencies. One reason for this is that agencies often do not have a clear picture of who their clients are. With a client profile, however, you can identify the leads that are likely to become your customers, and thus target them more accurately.

Before we get into creating a client persona, let’s look into what all you’ll be taking away from this blog post.

Why Create a Client Profile

An ideal client profile helps you identify the type of audience you want to reach out to. Think of a client profile example. as picking the right outfit for the occasion. Wearing a suit at the beach might be a recipe for sandy lapels, but at a bank, the same outfit marks you as the right person to be talking to.

How to Create Your Ideal Client Profile

Designate a few hours in your daily routine to research and understand your ideal audience. Get insights through surveys, attending webinars, and events, and expand your network to access that kind of audience.

While expansion is important, do remember to focus on a certain niche. You could be marked as a spammer if you’re expanding too rapidly in multiple areas of interest. On social media groups and networks, spammers can be penalized through permanent bans if their posts are irrelevant to that audience and come off as nuisances.

Here’s how to find the kind of information you should be looking for, and the anchor points to build that connection with your ideal client profile.

Create a form or a survey that you can use to fill in the information as you build connections. This is most likely going to be filled by you;  people tend to avoid filling surveys!

Steps to Identify your Ideal Client Profile

You can sort the information you find according to the following table.

Understand the needs of your potential client, and what solution best helps them retain sales.

Discovering Your Ideal Clients

To figure out what your ideal client profile is, connect with your existing clients on a personal level. You can do this through social media and then observe their behavior. This can require a significant investment of your time.

It’s easy to digress and lose focus on the kind of information you’re seeking when you’re building a connection with your audience.

Watch out for this video below to learn how Lee Jackson – CEO of Event Engine found out about their ideal client profile.

To help stay on track, ask yourself two major questions about your connections:

Do I have enough knowledge about my client’s demographics?

When looking up demographics, consider information like the age group you’re dealing with, their budget, their geographic location, and whether they’re selling products/services that cater to families or individuals.

These are some of the sub-questions you’ll want to answer, to be able to pick ideal client profile examples.

What business background does my client have?

Your client’s business background affects how they make decisions. Knowing where your client stands helps relate to them better. You’ll also be able to figure out what motivates your clients so you can explain how you can cater to their pain-points.

What is my client’s budget?

Information on your client’s budget can help you work around a price to pitch your services. If your initial pitch uses prices that are too high compared to the client’s budget, they’re likely to end the conversation there and then, let alone stay on retainer.

Do I have enough knowledge about my client’s psychographics?

Psychographics refers to the analysis of a certain group or sub-groups social aspects. For agencies building client profiles, this boils down to collecting social data such as the client’s beliefs and value system, attitudes and opinions, and their interests, lifestyles, and hobbies.

Here are some questions you’ll need to answer to understand your client base’s psychographics.

What are my client’s pain points about their customers?

This question helps you realize possible solutions that you can give your potential clients. When you understand the main problems that your ideal client may face, you can zero in on them when you’re going on a call with them.

What are my client’s online habits, and how familiar are they with digital marketing?

By incorporating your client’s online habits into your client profile, you can make sure your brand is present on the sites and groups your client visits. You can also create content and CTAs that your clients are likely to respond to.

Check the demographics you’ve identified for your ideal client base against the demographics for social media in order to see what platforms are suitable for connecting with your ideal client.

The client’s familiarity with these digital marketing strategies help you understand how easy/difficult it would be to explain the impact of a strategy and its contribution to the overall objective.

Let’s assume your potential client doesn’t know how TikTok has recently emerged as a medium to reach the youth. Explaining this to them would be a task on its own, compared to a well-versed client that understands recent trends and news about digital marketing.

You’ll have to prepare your pitch according to your client’s awareness, set up meetings accordingly, and spend time explaining why certain digital marketing strategies work better than others. By adding this information to the client profile, you can prioritize your clients and accordingly and ensure that your efforts in the pitch are worth the outcome.

Who are the influencers that my client follows?

Before scouting out potential clients, join groups and research experts and popular names that are well known in the community. You’ll find it easier to maintain a conversation with a client that follows an influencer you already know about, rather than someone that’s an alien to your universe.

By following the influencers of that niche, you’ll be able to pick up on a lot of anchor points. So you’ll understand the goals and motivators of your potential clients better when creating the client profile.

What are their sources of news and market insights?

Subscribe to news websites your potential clients are likely to read in order to gain their market insights. You can find this information in the forums, groups, and communities you join.

If your sources of news match with your potential client, you’re closer to their mental wavelength and can find more anchors to connect with them.

Do I need to create another/multiple personas for my clientele?

Some clients seek the services you’re offering but don’t have the budget. Alternatively, some clients require more than the services you offer, with a correspondingly hefty budget

Both of these kinds of clients are within the target audience you’re trying to reach. Hence, categorize them as Client Persona A, Client Persona B, Client Persona C, and so on to prioritize your communication. You wouldn’t want to lose out on clients that have a heavy budget but depending on your operations, you might also want to cater to clients with a smaller budget.

Clients with a bigger budget are often worth multiple agencies. Hence, you’re always at risk of losing out on those contracts. Safeguard your position; don’t put all your eggs in one basket with this type of client.

It’s often easier to maintain a connection with smaller budget clients. They’re also likelier to spread the word r about you. You’ll get authentic reviews and testimonials, and they’ll vouch for you as your ambassador in communities.

Who is the decision-maker in the process?

I can’t stress this point enough. That’s why I placed it last, so it’s easy to remember.

There are times when you pick up on a lead, communicate your ideas, and interest them in your services. But after sending the pitch, you’re put on hold. After following up a few times, you realize that your lead isn’t the person of authority and is waiting for his boss to look at the proposal that you’ve sent.

You could have skipped this entire process, by asking the question earlier and identifying the right person to pitch to in the client profile. The client persona should mention who the person reports to, so you know who else will be involved in the decision to hire your agency.

There are multiple strategies that you can adopt to get more clients to your agency. For instance, getting your website ranked and notice, or creating resources that your client may find useful. If you’re interested in knowing how you can acquire more clients, give this article a read.

Getting back to the main point –  It’s important to decrease the distance between you and the decision-maker. This makes your pitch more effective, as you can adjust your pricing, and add a few services to sweeten the deal.

So don’t shy away from asking who makes the decisions.

In a Nutshell

You’ve now built an understanding of what demographics come into play when creating an ideal client profile, and the kind of information you can use to connect with your ideal client’s psyche.

Once you’ve completed profiling your ideal client, focus on tasks to engage with the right audience. Such tasks include the following:

• Creating content that attracts the right audience
• Engaging in conversation on the right channels
• Targeting the right keywords
• Participating in/hosting events that would be interesting to your client

You should know that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all methodology;  you’ll be going through the process of trial and error to build that connection with the right audience.

If you like what you read – and wish to add your two cents about the kind of questions that ought to be asked, comment below.  We’ll be happy to start a conversation about it.

Taha Qureshi

Taha is a tech enthusiast and he believes there's no end to creativity. His roots are in content, digital marketing, and analytics. In the after-hours, he reads philosophy and teleports his game controller to its afterlife.

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