target market

Marketing and your Ideal Client 1

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / Cindy Hillsey / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / ideal client / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / market niche / marketing / niche market / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / target market / Virtual Partnering

How to market your coaching is a often requested topic, in today’s guest post coach Cindy Hillsey shares her expertise and knowledge in:

Marketing and your Ideal Client

By Cindy Hillsey

Ideal Client. Target Market. Niche Market. They all mean the same thing, right? Wrong!

And this, I believe, is where the confusion sets in for many business owners. How many times have you read an article, attended a seminar, and/or just had a conversation with someone where all three of these terms are used interchangeably? I’ll bet by now you don’t even hear those words anymore. And if you do, do you really understand what they mean and how they apply to your business? Unless you are clear about what these terms mean for your business, you will more than likely struggle with marketing your business.

I have a number of clients who contact me with what they call ‘marketing problems’. They are having a difficult time filling their practice. During our conversations, I find they don’t really have a marketing problem so much as they have an Ideal Client problem. They are trying to be everything to everyone. When I ask them who their Ideal Client is I am usually given a broad, vague answer such as: women, or women in transition, or Coaches, etc.. While that sounds great, it doesn’t tell me who your Ideal Client is and why she’s ideal.

If you don’t know who you are doing what to, how can you do it? And therein lies the real problem: It’s not about marketing, but about knowing who you are marketing to and why at a deep core level.

Let’s talk a bit more about Target Market, Niche Market, and Ideal Client. These terms do not mean the same thing. Please don’t confuse them as they serve different functions.

Target Market – This is a grouping based on one or more common characteristics. For example, age, sex, location, occupation, product purchases, etc.

Niche – This is primarily an occupational grouping. For example, Sports Channels, Financial Planners, Coaches, CPAs, VAs, etc.

Ideal Client – This is the person (and yes I am going to refer to this as one person even though you will have several of the one person) who you connect with at your core. This is the person you know extremely well, so well, in fact, that you can list their problems as though they were your own problems. You understand their values, desires, beliefs, as well as you understand your own. It is because of this deep understanding that you are able to offer effective solutions and/or guidance to your Ideal Client.

Here’s a visual of the above:

Target market, Niche market and Ideal client by Cindy Hillsey

It is this concept around the Ideal Client that will allow you to address the problems of your Ideal Client, offer solutions to your Ideal Client, and create the content on your website that speaks to your Ideal Client. In turn, this will allow you to market more effectively and easily. Once you know who are doing what to the rest of your marketing becomes easier.

Let’s take a moment and review some essential elements of the Ideal Client:

  • It’s counter-intuitive in the sense that it is most effective when your Ideal Client is highly specific and narrow.
  • When you try to be everything to everybody, you end being nothing to anybody.
  • There is a common center of interest and/or lifestyle of your Ideal Client.
  • Your Ideal Client exists in a sufficient quantity.
  • Your Ideal Client has the ability to pay you.
  • (Hint) Your Ideal Client is really you on some level!

What does having an Ideal Client do for you and your business?

  • An Ideal Client provides you with a clear vision and an obvious focus.
  • It enhances your credibility and your reputation.
  • It increases the demand for your services because of the specialized market.
  • It greatly simplifies marketing and increases your return on investment (ROI).
  • It provides a firm base from which you can expand your business.

So, how do you go about determining who your Ideal Client is? One way I would suggest is for you to write a story about your Ideal Client. Give him/her a name, an education, a family life (single or not), a social life, a business, and write about the problems they have in their business that you can help them solve. Get very detailed. Let me repeat that…get very detailed. I want you to know this person like you know your family!

These questions should help you begin to craft your Ideal Client:

1. What are the basic characteristics of your Ideal Client? (demographics, age, gender, salary, education, location, etc.)

2. Who are your clients? Are they business executives, artists, small business owners, micro business owners?

3. What kind of values does your ideal client have? Do these values match yours?

4. What exactly do your Ideal Clients do? How do they need your help? (Be very specific in your answers to these two questions.)

5. How do your Ideal Clients treat you? Do they pay on time? Do they understand you are a business owner and treat you as such?

Whether you know exactly who your Ideal Client is or not, please take the time to answer the above questions so that the next time you are asked, “Who is your Ideal Client? You can answer them without hesitation!

About the Author/Further Resources

Cindy Hillsey, CPC, ACC, is a Creative Small Business Coach and the owner of Virtual Partnering, based in Grand Rapids, MI. Cindy has an extensive background in small business, both online and offline. By combining her experience, business skills, and her coaching skills, she is able to offer her clients a unique perspective to help them achieve their business goals. She coaches women entrepreneurs who wish to express their creativity through their business by helping them put a solid business foundation in place step-by-step so that they can grow their business while fostering their creativity.

Cindy holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from Davenport University. She is a certified coach through the International Coach Academy. Along with being a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), she holds the Associate Certified Coach designation through the ICF. In addition, Cindy is currently working on obtaining her Certified Coach designation through the Creativity Coaching Association.

Cindy’s websites:

www.virtualpartnering.com

www.chatsondemand.com

Connect with me:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cindyhillsey

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cindyhillsey

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cindyhillsey

Who Is Your Ideal Client and Why Do You Need One?

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / Cindy Hillsey / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / communication / executive coach / ideal client / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / marketing / niche / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / sports coaching / target market / Virual Partnering

As a coach do you already know who is your ideal client? In this week’s guest post Cindy Hillsey shares her thoughts and expertise about how to identify your ideal client and why that’s important.

Who Is Your Ideal Client and Why Do You Need One?

By Cindy Hillsey

The topic of the Ideal Client is being discussed more and more frequently these days. Look around you. How many times have you read an article, attended a teleseminar, and/or had a conversation with someone where the topic turned to, “Who Is Your Ideal Client?” Why do you suppose this is? In fact, you may have gotten to a point where you’ve heard this question posed so often that you dismiss it with a wave of the hand and think, “of course I know who my Ideal Client is, who doesn’t?!” A truism in business is that if it’s a recurring theme it means that it’s not only important, but that it’s not being done by the majority. If everybody was doing it, there would be no need to discuss it.

If I were to ask you right now, “Who is your Ideal Client and why?” what would you tell me? Would you be able to do it without hesitation and in a crystal clear and concise manner? Would you have to pause before you answered the question? Very few people can answer this question without hesitation and pause. If you can answer without hesitation and pause, I want to congratulate you. Keep doing what you’re doing! For the rest of us, the ability to answer this question could mean the difference between having clients and not having clients.

While this seems like a very simple question, it really is not. It is a question you should spend a significant amount of time thinking about and getting very clear around. Let’s take a moment and review some essential elements of the Ideal Client:

  • It’s counter-intuitive in the sense that it is most effective when your Ideal Client is highly specific and narrow.
  • When you try to be everything to everybody, you end being nothing to anybody.
  • There is a common center of interest and/or lifestyle of your Ideal Client.
  • Your Ideal Client exists in a sufficient quantity.
  • Your Ideal Client has the ability to pay you.

 

What does having an Ideal Client do for you and your business?

  • An Ideal Client provides you with a clear vision and an obvious focus.
  • It enhances your credibility and your reputation.
  • It increases the demand for your services because of the specialized market.
  • It greatly simplifies marketing and increases your return on investment (ROI).
  • It provides a firm base from which you can expand your business.

I do want to take a moment to make certain you understand we are not talking about a Target Market or a Niche Market. Your Ideal Client is different from your Target or Niche market. People get stuck in the Target Market/Niche Market terminology. As a matter of fact, many times you will hear someone use Ideal Client, Target Market, and Niche Market all in the same sentence. Talk about confusing! Discovering your Ideal Client goes far beyond the Target Market/Niche Market terminology. Knowing who your Ideal Client is at a deep core level is one of the foundational pieces of your business.

It is important to remember that a Target Market/Niche Market is not your WHO. It’s a classification system. Just because you identify someone as an Ideal Client who is in a particular Target Market/Niche Market, it does NOT mean that ALL members of said Target Market/Niche Market are YOUR Ideal Client! It’s more foundational to identify the qualities and characteristics that you want to work with in a person than it is to identify some broad classification, because ultimately no matter what business you are in you end up dealing with individuals, right?

In fact, Target Markets/Niche Markets are actually derived from the more fundamental Ideal Client piece. For example, here are some of the characteristics I look for in my Ideal Client: Female, age 35-45, Service-Based Entrepreneur, who is positive, energetic, and honest. They respect my knowledge. They are do’ers. (This is not a comprehensive list, but will give you a feel for what I’m talking about.) From my clients who fit this criteria, I can clearly identify two Target Markets: Virtual Assistants and Coaches.

Note that I started with the Ideal Client and their characteristics NOT the Target Market/Niche Market. Conversely, let’s suppose for a moment that I insisted that I wanted to pick a Target Market/Niche Market, and I chose Coaches. It stands to reason that because I’m choosing a classification many of the coaches that come to me would not be my Ideal Client, because my Ideal Client is based on attributes and characteristics.

So, how do you go about determining who your Ideal Client is? I would suggest you write a story about your Ideal Client. Give him/her a name, an education, a family life (single or not), a social life, a business, and a problem they have in their business that you can help them with. Get very detailed. Let me repeat that…get very detailed. I want you to know this person like you know your family!

These questions should help you begin to craft your Ideal Client:

  1. What are the basic characteristics of your Ideal Client? (demographics, age, gender, salary, education, location, etc.)
  2. Who are your clients? Are they business executives, artists, small business owners, micro business owners?
  3. What kind of values does your ideal client have? Do these values match yours?
  4. What exactly do your Ideal Clients do? How do they need your help? (Be very specific in your answers to these two questions.)
  5. How do your Ideal Clients treat you? Do they pay on time? Do they understand you are a business owner and treat you as such?

Whether you know exactly who your Ideal Client is or not, please take the time to answer the above questions so that the next time you are asked, “Who is your Ideal Client? you can answer them without hesitation!

About the Author/Further Resources

As a Business Coach, I work with Service-Based Entrepreneurs, and I specialize in working with Virtual Assistants. Visit http://virtualpartnering.com for my FREE mini e-course on, The Six Basic Keys Every Business Should Have, along with other free resources.

Connect with me:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/VirtualPartnering

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cindyhillsey

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cindyhillsey