Community Matters: Attracting Your Ideal Customers
Community Matters: Attracting Your Ideal Customers
So you have a unique solution to a specific person's problem, and now you need to attract them. Attracting your ideal customers and clients is all about building an engaging community of people that benefit from what you’re offering, and love and trust your brand. When you put yourself and your business out into the world everyday, sharing your brand’s purpose and values, and connecting with like-minded individuals, you’ll begin creating an engaging community of people who are obsessed with what you do and how you helped them. Here’s some tips for attracting your ideal customers:
Know Who They Are
The number one thing you can do for your business, is know who will benefit from your offering. Before you can go about attracting the right people, you need to know exactly the kind of person that you want to attract, and the kind of person that your business can truly help. You might have a loose idea of who your ideal customer or client is, but knowing loosely isn’t going to help, but once you have a clear idea of who they are, you can speak directly to them, and build a brand that will attract them.
A few questions that we always ask our branding clients to consider when thinking about their ideal customer is:
Are they a certain age, gender, or demographic?
What do they do for a living, what is their income like?
What do they value?
What are their passions, hobbies, and habits?
What are they struggling with? (This does not need to be related to your offering)
What is their most basic problem that you have the solution for?
Where do they hang out? (This will give you insight into how to market to them)
You can, and should, go much deeper than these questions but these will get you started. The better you understand your ideal customers, the better you can attract, connect, and build relationships with them. When you know these things you can create a brand identity and messaging around the values that you share, their passions, and about the solutions that you offer to their problems.
If you know who your ideal customers are, and understand what they struggle with, then you can personalize your visual brand identity and messaging to better attract and serve them. And when your offering benefits not only a physical problem they have, but is also positioned as a solution to an emotional or even a philosophical problem, you’re much more likely to get their service over a similar business that only offers a solution to the physical problem. But of course, if you don’t know who your audience is or what their lives are like and what they’re struggling with, you won’t be the business that’s positioning their offering as successfully.
Remember, it's nearly impossible to attract your ideal customer when you don't know who they are, or when your brand identity and visuals are targeting the wrong group of people.
Tell A Great Brand Story
What’s your story? Your brand story is the emotional connection that you’ll make with your ideal customers, which is important in building that community around your brand. Consider your personal story, the why behind your business, and the messages that your business needs to communicate – this might be how you help your ideal customer, why you help, your values, or something else.
Having an emotional connection with your customers is so important for growing your business and connecting with your audience, because emotions play a large role in a person’s decision making and buying habits. Your ideal customers are much more likely to buy from you and advocate for your business, even if they no longer need your services or products, if they connect to your brand story and values, and if you provided value or solved a problem for them.
If you’re a small business, having a face behind the brand, someone for your ideal customers to connect with, is a great benefit to take advantage of. Share your personal story, like why you started the business, what are your passions and hobbies are, why you like serving your target audience, etc. Your ideal customers want to see you and get to know you. The more they feel like they know you or can connect with and relate to you, the more they’ll want to connect with your business, too.
A good rule of thumb when considering your brand story is to keep it relatively consistent across all platforms by always relating back to three or four business values or personal interests.
Consistently Show Up & Be Memorable
Once you know exactly who your ideal customers are, and you have a better understanding of what your brand story is, you can start attracting them – but you’ll need to figure out where they are to do so! Your target audience may be hanging out on Instagram or Twitter, or they may be going to networking events or conferences that you can show up to.
It takes time to build a community around your brand, and for your ideal customers to find you, which is why it’s important to show up consistently wherever they are, engaging with them and providing free value wherever and whenever you can, helping to make their life better or easier before they even buy from you.
Make sure your brand is consistent and recognizable. If you’re getting in front of your audience’s eyes, but they don’t recognize or remember you, it doesn’t matter. Having a strong and consistent brand identity that’s designed to attract your target audience will not only make it easier for you to create content for, but it will also be immediately recognizable and memorable.
Create Community Around Your Brand
Finding a way to create community around your brand can seem daunting, but it shouldn’t be. People like to be a part of a community, especially if they value what that community is doing or supporting, or if they feel that you’re consistently helping them on a consistent basis. If people are passionate about what your business is doing or what you’re all about, they will continue buying from you and referring you to people who are in need of what you have to offer.
Many businesses get 50% or more of their customers from past customers, so it’s important to remain top of mind by showing up consistently, and providing a quality experience every time. If you’re relatable and consistently sharing your brand story, people who relate to you or your journey will want to continue following along and watching your business grow.
I hope these tips are helpful as you begin attracting your ideal customers to your brand, if you need help getting noticed in a crowded marketplace, feel free to sign up for my email list to receive free tips on branding, view our services, or schedule a discovery call to discuss the best steps forward for you.
We offer everything from Brand Strategy Sessions to help newer businesses define their target audience and uncover their unique brand positioning, to bespoke Brand Identity Design.
