John Jantsch
A very well accepted practice in marketing goes something like this: Find out as much as you can about your very best clients, narrow your marketing focus and find more of the same.
I often start out the creation of a marketing plan for my clients with a thorough analysis of their current and past clients, with an eye out for common characteristics among their best clients. The thought is, if you can really identify traits that seem to show up in your best clients, then the game becomes a simple process of finding more people just like them.
The problem with this theory arises in the art and science of what just like them is.
While demographers will point to a host of demographic profiles that may be helpful, I find that the real analysis usually lies hidden deeper in what marketers commonly call psychographics.
First, the demographics.
Create a spreadsheet of your clients and add columns that represent as much information as you can. What industry, size of the company, # of employees, length of business. For individuals, note things such as: age, gender, education level, income and neighborhood.
Give some thought to outside the box demographics too. I once had a client that found it was significant that almost all of their best clients were dog owners. For this particular business, that became a noteworthy marketing point.
What you are attempting to do in this exercise is look for commonalities in your client list. If you have never really done an analysis of this nature you may be surprised by what is now readily apparent. Example: (US Census Bureau Stats)
Once you discover some common traits you may find that subtle shifts in your marketing messages will make a lot of sense. For example, I was visiting with Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth, (Im not name dropping here, Ive known Michael for a long time and we visit frequently. In fact, Im working on creating a blog for him.) and he shared that the E-Myth message really appeals to women and that has had significant impact on his latest offerings.
Now, the psychographics.
To really get a feeling for your ideal clients you must dive into a much harder area to define, but one that I believe holds the real truth just exactly what makes your clients buy.
Somehow youve got to start understanding what your clients value, fear, want, need and dream. No easy task to say the least. It may be a bit uncomfortable going up to a client and asking, So Bill, what keeps you us at night? But, if you knew that, would it help you better understand how to best serve all the Bills in your market.
Here are a couple questions that I have invented that I use with clients to help me get at this deeper level of understanding in some clever ways. Understand that this is more art than science so you might as well have some fun with it.
I think you can tell a lot about how a person approaches life by looking into some favorite places. What do you think I could learn about you if I knew:
~ What was currently on your refrigerator
~ What kind of car you drove (and what it looked like at the moment)
~ Your favorite books
~ Your favorite songs
People dont seem to mind me asking these types of questions and often the answers, combined with the demographic information I already have, completes the ideal client picture in sometimes fascinating ways.
So, what on your refrigerator?
* Scrapes of quotes torn from the last issue of O.
* A photo of your next vacation destination
* School art projects mixed with soccer schedules
* The latest low fat recipe
* Neatly arranged magnetic letters
* Party invitations
*Nothing
It all means something to the marketer willing to dig deep enough to assemble the puzzle.
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