Know Your Audience: 15 Strategies For Creating Your Ideal Client Profile

Your business wouldn’t exist without its clients and customers. That’s why it’s crucial for everyone involved in your business to understand your ideal audience. Keeping your customers in mind when making business decisions will help you both attract and retain your following, translating to more overall success for your company.

One smart way to do this is by creating ideal client profiles, which highlight key features of your prospective customers to help you better target and cater to them. To help you get started, a panel of Forbes Coaches Council members offered some useful strategies for creating these hypothetical customer profiles so they accurately embody your real-life audience.

1. Look At Competitor Reviews

Depending on which business you are in, if it’s at all possible to get feedback from your competitor’s past customers, it will be invaluable. When you can see where the competition missed the mark, you can ensure your business fills that void. – Elizabeth Pearson, Elizabeth Pearson Executive Coaching

2. Hire A Client To Directly Tell You Their Needs

Don’t guess as to what clients need. Hire a couple of clients. When you want to understand your audience, have them with you every day, working hard to articulate for you who they are and what they need. In the end, you’ll save more in marketing costs than you lose by having some client exemplars on your staff. – Tom Kolditz, Doerr Institute for New Leaders

3. Establish Processes For Listening To Stakeholders

Put processes in place to really listen to all of your stakeholders. Make it a part of your culture to build a deep understanding of what your customers need and want. Create a customer profile that is “alive” so that the business can grow as the customer’s needs evolve. Ask your team to discuss customer needs without judgment and defensiveness. Value all feedback your customers give you. – Christine Grimm, Aria Consulting International

4. Look At Common Demographic Traits

Have a look at all the customers you have worked with in the past and create a systematic overview of traits like their age, gender, job title, city and country they live in, their hobbies, their core problem, etc. Create two to three ideal customer avatars based on that. This strategy is useful as it is based on real-life data out of your business. – Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, Think Natalia

5. Create An Empathy Map

The Empathy Map, developed by Dave Gray, is a tool you can use to gain a deeper insight into your ideal client. By stepping into their shoes, you can tap into what they’re thinking and feeling, what they’re seeing and hearing and what they’re saying and doing. This helps you create and develop solutions that better address their biggest “pain points” and deliver on their ideal “gains.” – Gabriella Goddard, Brainsparker Leadership Academy

6. Discover Their Problem

There are two questions to answer: First, what is the problem or challenge faced by your ideal clients? Second, how do you help them overcome it? Getting clear on the answers will give you the information you need to define your ideal clients and to refine your offerings to them. If you can state the answers to each question in one or two sentences, you’ll have the clarity to build your business. – Gina Lucente-Cole, Promina Advisors

7. Adopt The Client’s Viewpoint

To create an ideal client profile, flip your script. Focus less upon what services and solutions you can provide to your “ideal client” and more on framing the “wants and needs” from the client’s viewpoint. Understand the difference between what they say they want and what they truly need to have in order to make their business successful. Fill the need. – Faith Fuqua-Purvis, Synergetic Solutions

8. Focus On Building An Emotional Connection

The key to an ideal client profile is an emotional connection—understanding their deepest desires and the biggest challenge keeping them from getting there. And one of the most effective strategies is to share your journey, as you are your own target audience. Self-awareness and self-mastery are key. It’s the most useful strategy because you can only teach what you’ve experienced. – Whitney Mullings, Whitney Mullings

9. Create Vivid Descriptions Of Your Customers

Creating an ideal client characterization helps to envision and distinguish the customer who is most availing themselves of your business. Vividly describe your customers’ experience, their goals, their motivations and pain points. This understanding translates to what ultimately brings them to your business and leads their purchasing decisions, and most importantly, can help you create new offerings. – James Glasnapp, James Glasnapp Coaching

10. Gather insights From Prominent Leaders

Interview key leaders in your industry niche and sector to identify what matters to them. You will gather critical insights and issues at the forefront of their minds, enabling you to clearly define your products and services to effectively serve your ideal clientele base. In addition, you can deliver a white paper to the participants highlighting these key insights as a thank you. – Debbie Ince, Executive Talent Finders, Inc

11. Consider The Perspectives Of Both End Users And Buyers

There are several tools that might help you to understand your ideal clientele better. Somehow, they might not work at all because very often there is a great difference in a company between an actual client, who uses your products or services, and a decision-maker, who pays for them. If you want to create an ideal client profile, think about them both. How do you solve the problems of both parties? – Inga Bielińska, Inga Bielinska Coaching Consulting Mentoring

12. Factor In The Costs Associated With Your Client

Most companies think of the ideal client as the one that either does or can spend the most amount of money with the company. However, there are many other important data points to consider, such as acquisition costs, maintenance costs and opportunity costs. Be careful of the “ideal” client that causes you to misdirect time and energy, preventing you from achieving important company goals. – Donald Hatter, Donald Hatter Inc.

13. Figure Out Who You Are Excited To Work With Each Day

Many businesses start out selling to whoever will pay. But it rarely takes long to realize that certain personalities or styles are draining your energy. So it becomes time to create the profile of your ideal client. Don’t be afraid to go deep in brainstorming a list of traits, characteristics and the personality of this perfect match. Once identified, direct all your marketing copy to appeal to them. – Laura DeCarlo, Career Directors International

14. Give Them A Name And Aim To Understand Them Deeply

Having a clear idea of your ideal clients helps sharpen your marketing messages that speak to them as if they are talking about themselves and make them feel understood and cared about. Understanding them inside and out does the magic. That means diving into their key challenges, fears, lifestyle, dreams, shame and how they look and feel. Also, give them a name so you feel they are real. – Amy Nguyen, Happiness Infinity LLC

15. Interact With Clients Face-To-Face

When considering all the available tools and methods, it is easy to forget that end users are human beings that can’t be reduced to ones and zeros. Though it may be considered outdated, I have found that there is no real replacement for face-to-face interactions. Lack of resources may prevent face-to-face interactions, but it should be considered the top method in truly understanding customers. – Kamyar Shah, World Consulting Group