How to find your perfect customer

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how you can come up with your perfect customer. In this episode I talk all about why we can't just look at the demographics and how we can now go much deeper than that.  I’d really love to know where you’re listening to this episode, and what you do whilst you tune in - is it whilst you’re on a walk, whilst you get ready in the morning, as you work or somewhere else? Take a photo or a screenshot and tag me in your Instagram stories to let me know! KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST The problem with only looking at demographics How to understand your customers behaviours, motivations and aspirations Why you need to focus more on the benefits of what you sell, rather than the service or product itself LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Join my Visibility Challenge Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter   Transcript Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week I am going to talk all about your perfect customer. Because I was putting together a freebie that I have about visibility. If you want it, you can go to teresaheathwareing.com/visible, and basically it's like a five day email challenge where I email you every day and I give you something specific to do. And it's all about getting more visible, getting in front of other people's audiences through things like podcasts and speaking on other people's in other people's groups, or doing a guest blog or whatever it might be. But it's a really brilliant way to increase your audience and a really successful one. So I've put together this visibility challenge, and when I was putting it together, I was going to record a video about how you come up with your perfect customer, how you know they are. And I just didn't get time cuz I really gave myself some tight deadlines, which. I'm actually finding that I really need to do at the moment to get stuff done. Sometimes you're over productive and sometimes you need a kick, and I'm, I'm in the season of needing a kick right now. So I was gonna do a video, didn't do a video, and then I thought, oh, I know well, it was actually not my idea. It was one of my lovely members' ideas. Why didn't you link to an old podcast? Well, I couldn't find one for ages and ages, and I thought, surely I've done an episode recently on how you come up with your perfect customer. But evidently I haven't. So I am going to do that today, but it's quite good actually because I've recently talked about this in lots of talks I've given. And I've got some new examples and some new things to maybe put your way, which might help you come up with your customer a bit easier, or at least give you a different way of thinking about it. So if you've seen me speak about this before, you will have seen me talk about that we can't just look at the demographics. So when I started back in marketing all those many, many, many, many years ago, when I did my degree in it, We literally used to just look at like what age is our perfect customer? What sex are they? Where are they based, or what's their location? What's their marriage status? Do they have children? And what kind of job might they? It was really basic information, and that doesn't work any longer, and it doesn't have to because we have so much more information available to us now and in this amazing world that we're in. And the example I gave when I did this, I talked about an estate agent, so I was saying, let's say you had an estate agent and I went to them who's your perfect customer? What age are they? Well, there could be any age, you know, basically from the over 18, right the way up to whenever it is, someone might buy a house. Well, what sex are they? Well, they could be any gender. What location? Okay. You could argue that they're going to be in the location of the estate agents, but. You've also got people moving into the area, so what location are they coming from? Well, anywhere. Are they married? What's their marriage status? Could be, might not be, could be divorced, could be separated, could be single. Do they have children? Well, some do, some don't. Some won't ever, some will. What jobs they do? Well, there could be any jobs. So this just doesn't work because the whole point in getting to know who your customer is, is that you are marketing, you are messaging your social media, your, your content should always be leading them to, to you and your stuff. I, as your perfect customer, should read your content, should see a social media post and think you're talking directly to me, and that's really hard to do when you don't know who these people are, or you are only looking at them from those points of view. So for a long while I've been talking about can you answer the following and it's do you know what their behaviors, motivations, and aspirations are, what their pain points are and how do you meet their needs? Now I put together in one of the many presentations I've got, I've gave a few different examples. One example is my business. And another example I've done recently because I did a talk for a big, big company over in Greece and they had like FedEx there and they had like the Greece's largest telecom company and it was huge. So I didn't wanna use me as an example cause I felt a little bit small. So I ended up using Dove as an example. And actually it's a great example and, and I'm sensed kind of falling in love with them and their marketing. So let's talk about behaviors, motivations, and aspirations. So when I look at my customers, so if you are a customer of mine, I'm assuming you might resonate with some of these. So you have a business that you love and you know you want to make a difference to the people you serve. All of my customers are that you work really hard, but just not just in the business. So you. It isn't just about the business. You have other things, and it might be that you have a family. It might be that you have a partner, you might have hobbies. This is okay, but could be better. I think that's standard for everybody who's in business. You might get nervous meeting new people, and you might lack confidence in your business skills and your own self-belief. So you know that you are good. Well, you might not always know, but I'm telling you, you are good at the thing you do. Sometimes you just might lack a bit of that confidence in terms of running a business. And you want your business to grow and be successful, but you don't necessarily want it to grow at the risk of something else. So if I said to you, well, actually, some of you might say yes to, and I was about to say to you, if I say to you, right, you can't see your kids in the week, but you can have a successful business, some of you might say yes, some of you might go, no, I love my children. I want to see them. But you know what I mean? Like if I said to you, okay, you gotta work every hour that God sends and then you might be successful. A lot of you are gonna go, yeah, no, I don't want that. And you wanna grow at a pace that's realistic, right? So you want to know that you do wanna succeed. You do know you are, you are meant for more. You have got huge aspirations, but actually your behaviors and motivations are around doing a good job and showing up authentically. So that is my customer. So then if I whip over to the one that I did for Dove, When it came, so in case you're not sure, I'm sure you know who Dove is, but they are a brand in the uk, not just a UK brand. They're an international brand and they do skincare and haircare, and they do do it for males. They do male products, female products. But when you look at their stuff, their marketing is predominantly aimed at females. So behaviors, motivations, aspirations for Dove customer is that they want to take care of their body, but they don't wanna spend a fortune on skincare. So dove's customers do want nice products, but they're not willing to spend a huge amount of money. They care about their planet and themselves, so they are not necessarily into. Like, you know, really fake toxic type stuff. If it makes 'em look good because they do wanna look good, but they don't wanna spend a, a fortune and they don't wanna put it at the risk of the planet or themselves. They love and value natural products. They want to see real women and they want to see themselves represented. So when they look at their people's marketing when they