Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Just who is your ideal customer? That is probably the most important question to answer before you can really start marketing. It is also probably the most difficult question to answer for a lot of people. You really need to know who you want to attract to your shop so that you can target them in your marketing campaign.

When I say marketing campaign I am not necessarily talking about an advertising campaign where you spend a lot of money. You marketing campaign may consist of a Facebook Page, a Blog, A Twitter or Pinterest account. All of which are great marketing tools and are 100% free to use. Let me rephrase that, they are all free from fees to use. They all take time to use and like they say, time is money! But I digress...

Take out a piece of paper, or open a text editor and start brainstorming about who your ideal customer is. Try to figure out all of the things that make up your ideal customer. Write it all down no matter how silly or obvious it may seem. Let's pretend you are a toy maker as an example. I am going to try and brainstorm the perfect customer for my line of toys.

My ideal customer is:
1. kids
2. parents
3. higher income
4. appreciative of handmade goods
5. uses a lot of social networks
6. has a lot of friends online
7. stay at home parent
8. into vintage toys
9. plays together with their kids
10. someone who is loyal to brands
11. someone who celebrates a lot of holidays where gifts are given
12. someone who does not like to buy from mainstream stores.

Alright, I hope you are getting my point here. So, my ideal customer is almost all of the things above. I can probably take off #1: kids, but it did lead me to #2. That is part of why you brainstorm. Not everything is going to be used directly but it may spark something that is.

Start building a 'character sheet' of your ideal customer. How old are they, where do they live, what do they buy, what do they read, what do they do for entertainment. This is an ongoing process. You ideal model may change a lot over time. One thing to keep in mind is that you can market to 5,000 people who would never think to look for your product and you might get a sale or you can market to the 5 people looking for what you have and make 5 sales.

I will write more on this subject on my next blog post. Until then, start brainstorming and see what you come up with. If you have comments or questions feel free to leave them here or email me at MarketMyShop@gmail.com