Replay: How to find your perfect customer

Following on from last week's episode, the next few week's episodes are going to be replays of past episodes.

Each of these will dive deeper into each of the 3 main areas that you need to focus on in business, right from day one.

Starting with today’s episode, which 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. 

 
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
Check out my Summer Sale bundle

Join my Visibility Challenge

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

 
Transcript
Teresa: The whole point in getting to know who your customer is, is that your marketing, your messaging, your social media. Your, your, your content should always be leading them 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.

You are listening to Your Dream Business podcast, episode 289. You are listening to Your Dream Business Podcast and I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. If you are a business owner who is striving to build a business and a life that you dream of on your own terms and doing something that you love then this is the podcast for you. Each week I will share with you business, marketing and mindset, tools and strategies that I have used to start and grow my own dream business, as well as the dream businesses of hundreds of business owners from around the world. So if you're ready, let's get started.

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...

Following on from last week's episode, the next few week's episodes are going to be replays of past episodes.

Each of these will dive deeper into each of the 3 main areas that you need to focus on in business, right from day one.

Starting with today’s episode, which 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. 

 
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
Check out my Summer Sale bundle

Join my Visibility Challenge

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

 
Transcript
Teresa: The whole point in getting to know who your customer is, is that your marketing, your messaging, your social media. Your, your, your content should always be leading them 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.

You are listening to Your Dream Business podcast, episode 289. You are listening to Your Dream Business Podcast and I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. If you are a business owner who is striving to build a business and a life that you dream of on your own terms and doing something that you love then this is the podcast for you. Each week I will share with you business, marketing and mindset, tools and strategies that I have used to start and grow my own dream business, as well as the dream businesses of hundreds of business owners from around the world. So if you're ready, let's get started.

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 buy from companies. Dove's customers want to see themselves represented in the marketing and they love seeing empower messages about women.

So these are kind of the behaviors and motivations and aspirations of a Dove customer. So as you can see, they're much, much deeper. They're going in on a really personal level. So now let's go to the next point, which was pain points. Now, what often here happens here is people get really focused on the thing they sell and the thing they fix.

That's not always the case. So in my instance, in my business, some of the pain points that I help with, or some of the pain points that my customers have is they're worried their business will fail and they'll have to get a job. Now that's like the ultimate fear and the ultimate pain point. It's like, I really, God, I couldn't imagine anything worse than myself.

Honestly. My husband tries to convince me that I should get a corporate job because he sees how hard I work, and he's like, but you could earn really good money really easily. You wouldn't have to do half as much as you do already. You're like, yeah, but I love what I do, so no, thank you. So, you know, the idea of getting a job is just the worst in my head, and some of that pain points might be then not making enough money, and they want their income to be important, so, They are bringing in money.

That's without doubt. People in my world, they do tend to be bringing in money, but it's not enough, and they want it to be important. They wanna feel valued about the money that they bring in. They're not sure if they're doing all the things right. So they've been delivered a million different ways to do things.

They've heard that many different experts. They're a bit lost in the weeds as to what is the thing they actually need to do and what is, what is the next step for them? Like they just wanna know the next thing. They get overwhelmed with everything they should be doing in their business, and they wanna be taken seriously.

Like they don't want people to think they're just playing at this and they are serious business people. They really wanna be taken seriously and they want to become more confident. Not only about their business, but also with them. The people who come into my world, they do the work on themselves. You know, they've maybe had a therapist, they've maybe had a coach in the past.

These people cared. They've probably done the Enneagrams and the Myers-Briggs and all that. And now they just want it to make sense. And they want, they want their, their life and their business to become more of one. And they wanna work out how they use all these amazing tools and bring it together to be the best possible version that they can.

So those are the pain points that my customers have. So let's whip over. I'm literally going between two presentations. If you hear my mic's moving. To the Dove presentation. So what are the pain points of people who buy Dove products? So they're a busy person who doesn't have time or money to spend hours on themselves.

So people who buy Dove products, they're not the kind of people who necessarily go into a department store a weekend and spend ages at makeup counter, like having everything tried on and you know they haven't got time for that. They're tired of seeing what women should look like. They're tired of seeing the filtered, perfect versions of women that once felt like we had to be there, but now feel like that's just such a rubbish, so let's just be truthful about it.

They want a good product without spending lots of money and they wanna be seen, they want to feel beautiful. They want to feel empowered, and they want to educate themselves on self-care. So they know that self-care isn't just about taking a bath. It's a lot more than that, but they want to be educated around that. And they want, they know they're beautiful and they want people to see them as beautiful and therefore the world to kind of be a bit more realistic about what beauty is.

Okay, so then the last thing, how do I meet their needs? So let's go back, flip back to my business. So in terms of how I meet their needs, what often happens here is we often go, well, I do one-to-one, I do one to many. I do, you know, small coaching groups. I speak on stages. I have the podcast. That's not what we mean.

So when we say how do we meet their needs, how do I meet those problems? So for me, it's things like I have a community of like-minded business owners for support. So the people in my community are the nicest humans. I say this all the time, and people don't get it until they come in. They really don't, they don't understand.

We're doing a, an open house soon, so do come in for that cuz people don't quite get what I mean until they come into my world and then they're like, these people are phenomenal. They are phenomenal. So I provide that. We obviously have online training that they can do in their own time and doing in their own time is really important because of the fact they're busy and they're juggling a million things.

We give really straightforward and no BS and no fluff advice. So they can get those direct answers. We offer accountability. Now, in my mind, what has been the biggest change in the online world, and certainly for me and what I offer, is that people are getting a bit tired of the courses, and I've actually stopped offering any new courses in my group because they've got a shed load of them.

And if there was something in particular that they were all like, we really need help with this, then of course I would bring someone in to do it. And actually instead, I'm offering up the space to my members and I'm saying, come and teach us what you know. So one week we'll learn about Feng shui, then we're gonna learn about art, then we're going to learn about Google ads.

Like it's really cool. Anyway, so we offer that kind of space where they can learn things, but it's the accountability that people need. So for me, I have been bringing in more and more and more accountability to get them to get the work done. We give them live coaching calls where they can ask me anything.

So when they're overwhelmed and they're not sure what to do next, that's why they have those coaching calls. We do the mindset stuff so they can develop themselves further in terms of becoming a more kind of, you know, I was gonna say rounded human, that's not the word I wanted to use at all. But you know that they have these tools in their toolbox in order to whip them out when life gets hard.

Cuz it does and it, well, we run businesses this stuff is not easy. And they want the safe space to grow where there's no growth shaming. So I've been in groups before where it really has been, unless you're bringing in this amount of money, you're really, you're not important. And that is just shocking because.

First off, if we all go back to the last time we were employed and how much we got paid, you know, it's probably kind of unbelievable that we could ever earn the money we earn now through a job. So somehow when you get into your own business, people just kind of lose their minds and think if they're not earning seven figures, they're not successful.

Well, that's absolutely madness. And the other thing that I, how I meet their needs is I get to know them and their business. So if I genuinely know the people in my world, I had an amazing testimonial written for me the other day. Which fyi, I just paused this recording so I could run off and get it not physically run off.

It was on my computer, so it was on LinkedIn, which was really lovely. It was as a recommendation and it was lovely Sarah Jane, and she put, I've been a member of the Business Dream Club and I don't know. Dream Business Club. I don't know the name of my own club. I've been a member of the Dream Business Club for about a year, and I followed her free offerings for a couple years before that, when I wasn't her client, she always had time to personally reply, to answer my replies to her emails, which gobsmacked me, but is part of the course for her.

She genuinely cares about helping people, and that's part of it to her. Now I'm in a membership. I can tell you there's nothing she wouldn't do for our members to help us help ourselves. The monthly group coaching calls is always helpful even if you listen, because she digs down right down into what's going on and make sure she understands not only the exact situation you're asking about, but also the most important.

What's most important to you? I hate reading, you know that. She deeply understands that different people have different priorities. There's no one size fits all answers in business, she's cultivated a fabulous membership filled with similarly kindhearted, positive minded entrepreneurs already to help and encourage each other.

In many Facebook groups, I see people routinely bash for not, for not somehow already knowing things, but never in the dream business club. And she goes on and says lots of other things, which is just amazing. But that was so, so lovely to hear. So when we talk about meeting their needs, it's not necessarily about here's what the product is, is about how you meet the needs.

Like so I could have a...