9 Ways to Target Your Ideal Customers

With inflation putting the pinch on everyone, businesses must find ways to maximize the value of everything they do. That can mean exploring how to increase revenue from existing customers through cross-selling and up-selling. When it comes to new customers, though, maximizing value means finding ways to target your ideal customers. Ideal customers are routinely more profitable and often longer-term because they’re a better fit for your products or services. If you want more ideal customers, here are nine ways to target them.

What Are Ideal Customers?

Ideal customers are those customers who tick all of the right demographic, psychographic, or industry traits. For example, let’s say that your business sells high-end jewelry. Your ideal customers will likely need a certain income level, live in an affluent neighborhood, and put a premium on high-end items. Minimally, you should have a detailed customer profile to help guide your efforts.

1. Target the Right Channels

You can’t reach your ideal customers if your advertising or marketing doesn’t show up in the same places as those ideal customers. You must target your ads and marketing on the channels that they frequent, such as periodicals, blogs, radio, or TV.

2. Focus on Pain Points

One of the best ways to target your ideal customers is to focus on their pain points. What problem or problems in your ideal customer’s life will your product solve? If you sell customer relationship management software, what issues will it resolve that similar products don’t for your target industries?

3. Share Content

The number of people who are not on social media shrinks every year. That makes social media an ideal outlet for sharing content that addresses the interests and concerns of your ideal customers. It’s also a good way of building trust.

4. Tailor Language

One of the ways you can attract attention is by using the same terms or phrases your ideal customers use when they talk about their concerns or problems. Why? They’ll use those terms and phrases when searching for content. If you use the same phraseology, it’s more likely that your content will show up high in their search results.

5. Use Their Preferred Format

Different audiences prefer their content in different formats. Some audiences prefer text-based content like blog posts or articles, while others prefer video content. Once you read their preferred format, create content that caters to that preference.

Don’t forget that not all content must come from in-house. You can often outsource content creation to freelancers. In the case of video production, it’s often better to outsource at least some of the production processes to professionals. Although, you will probably want to keep your hand in to ensure that it stays on track regarding brand voice.

6. Referrals

There’s a good chance that at least some of your existing customers fit your ideal customer profile. Encourage those customers to make referrals. While it’s not a guarantee, the people those ideal customers refer to will often be ideal customers. Overall, people tend to know others who are like them. That makes referrals particularly valuable.

7. Buy Lists

Only some businesses have the time or money to do detailed research. Research is time-intensive and often cost-intensive. Once you have an ideal customer profile in hand, you can use that profile as the basis for buying prospect lists that fit that profile. The good news is that you can get lists of email addresses, physical addresses, and even phone numbers. That lets you control costs and gives you some options for the approach.

8. Target on Social Media

One of the beautiful things about social media is that people provide all kinds of information that your business can use to narrow down good prospects. For example, people will routinely list interests that help confirm psychographic features, such as political affiliations or hobbies. People will also routinely list their jobs and employers, which can help confirm demographic data, such as general income level.

9. Choose the Right Sales Channel

Something that a lot of businesses overlook is the importance of using the right sales channels. Some customers always default to certain sales channels, such as Amazon, while others want to buy directly from a business website. Still, others want to make their purchases in person. If you’re selling a product, you should consider listing your products through online retailers and on your own website. If you run a physical storefront, make sure that it’s easy for people to find the location information for your store.

Targeting Your Ideal Customers

While you might eventually use all the ways to target your ideal customers listed above, you’ll probably want to start with just a few. Pick the ones that best suit your business. For example, with high-end products, referrals might suit you best. For services, focusing on your website, social media presence, and content may serve you best.

Still determining if your business website is getting it done in terms of targeting your ideal customers. E-Marketing Associates can help you turn your website into an online marketing site for your business.