When you’re just starting your business, you want to make any sale that you can get. Your mom wants something that you don’t currently offer? No problem, you can add it. Your friend needs something customized when you don’t offer customization? That’s fine! You bend over backwards to make any sale you can get and you’re excited about each and every one. But have you ever thought about how doing this sets your business up for failure?
You’ve heard the phrase “an inch deep and a mile wide” and, when you are selling to the entire world, that’s what your business is like.
In trying to sell to everyone – you are actually selling to no one.
- No one is being drawn to your brand because they identify with you.
- Repeat customers are few and they’re rarely for the same product or service.
- And your focus is pulled in a million different directions every day.
Your business is not moving forward, but spreading thin.
The solution to moving away from selling to everyone is to create a client persona who embodies the only type of person to whom you are selling. This puts your business in a niche market selling to one type of person.
You must get specific with your client persona in order for this to work but, once you have a detailed persona created, all of a sudden your marketing becomes second nature. The time that you were spending trying to please everyone is now spent pleasing your dream clients that are paying you to do exactly what you want to do.
As an example, I’m going to share my client persona for Mama’s Black Book with you. While I’ve decided to pursue other projects right now, due to the amount of work the magazine required, I still have a very clear picture of who the magazine was for.
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Do you see how specific I got with my client persona?
Not only does she have an age and a general location but I know what kinds of products she loves to shop for, what brands she wears regularly, and the type of dog that she has!
I am the expert on Analise and being the expert on her makes my marketing decisions incredibly easy…
Should I promote MBB on YouTube?
– No, Analise doesn’t visit it.
Should the pdf version of the magazine be laid out in a full spread or single page?
– Single page, because Analise usually reads it on her iPad and she wants to focus on one page at a time.
Knowing exactly who I’m selling to not only makes my job easier but influences all of the smaller decisions regarding my product. I’m able to choose packaging, distribution avenues, colors, and more simply by knowing the type of person Analise is.
If you don’t currently have a detailed client persona written down, I encourage you to sit down today and create one. Get as detailed as you can about him or her. You’re going to find that knowing the exact type of person that you are selling to makes it infinitely easier to make decisions about your business. And you can be reassured knowing that creating a client persona doesn’t mean that you can’t sell to buyers that don’t fit your “ideal client” makeup, but it means that everything that you do as a business will attract the kind of clients that you want to get and keep in your business.
